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THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES Send This Review to a Friend
A pretentious tease with an ending that may leave viewers feeling annoyed and cheated,
“The Life Before Her Eyes,” which holds interest mostly because of its cast, is outrageously contrived. Surprise endings are fine if earned by a film’s structure and rationale. But this one is thoroughly devious, with a construction that renders the ending devoid of any sense. It is only gimmick time.
Based on a novel by Laura Kasischke, written by Emil Stern and directed by Vadim Perelman, the film takes off from a mass shooting in a high school, jumps into the future and keeps switching back and forth in time. The time changes are jangling in themselves, but when you find out what’s afoot by the end of this exercise in gamesmanship, the technique will seem the least of the woes.
The fortunate aspect—if anything in this film can seem fortunate—is the casting. Evan Rachel Wood plays Diana, a high school student, and Eva Amurri is Maureen, her best friend. In the midst of a shooting by a classmate, they are cornered in a school bathroom.
In the time leap, Diana is now played by Uma Thurman as a survivor troubled by the past experience accentuated by the 15th anniversary of the horrific event and married to a professor with an eight-year old daughter who is a rebellious problem child at the parochial school in which she is enrolled.
An effort is made to build up suspense in the context of the day of the shooting and complication after complication is piled on in the leaps into the future. I won’t disclose the gimmick, even though the ruse deserves little respect. If you care, you’ll have to suffer for yourself. A Magnolia Pictures release.
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