"The Life Before Her Eyes" **** (out of ****)
I was initially mixed about watching "The Life Before Her Eyes". I had been a great fan of director Vadim Perelman's directorial debut, "The House of Sand & Fog", which I placed on my top ten list in 2003, so I was curious to see if Perelman would be able to repeat the magic, yet, at the same time this film looked a little weak. I didn't care for the title and the trailer made the film seem predictable and too sentimental.
Luckily I went against my instinct and watched the film anyway. Because I knew nothing about the film's plot everything took me by surprise and really struck me. I wasn't prepared to go down the path this film travels.
At first I thought the film was about a young girl who was a bit of a trouble maker as a teen who grows up and has a daughter which seems to be following in her footsteps forcing her to think back to her past and realize her daughter's mistakes.
"The Life Before Her Eyes" is and isn't about that. At least not as black & white as I thought it would be. The themes are there, life, death, guilt, the generation gap, teen angst. But "The Life Before Her Eyes" handles the material in a much different manner. In some ways it is similar to Perelman's first film. Perelman almost seems to shoot films in a realistic fashion, yet the films are stylized and poetic but the emotions feel sincere and the characters jump off the page and breath. The situations the characters find themselves in seem like they could happen to anyone, including yourself. And that's what makes "The Life Before Her Eyes" so appealing to me.
Though not everyone would agree. I was surprised after watching it to find out about the negative reaction the film was met with. It was made on a budget of $13 million and grossed a little more than $300,000. On the website, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ which is a collection of film reviews which then averages out their opinions the film scored a 26%. One critic I respect, Stephen Holden of the New York Times wrote the film is "tidy, predictable, excruciatingly fussy in its detail and lacking the tiniest glimmer of humor." Why a drama like "The Life Before Her Eyes" needs humor is beyond me and is something only Holden seems to know.
But some did defend the film like Newsday which stated "director Vadim Perelman blends two powerful performances into a seamless whole, giving equal time to the dreamy sensuality of adolescence and the crushing weight of adulthood." That is a brilliant, perfectly expressed opinion of the film and really gets at the heart of why I too was so pleased watching this film. "The Life Before Her Eyes" is a look at the disappointment of life. How dreams die, hopes fade and society kicks us to the curbs. It is about unfulfilled desires. That may not sound like something a lot of people might want to watch and why I was puzzled Holden felt the film needed humor but films such as this always relate to me.
Films where characters look back on their life and regret it usually have universal appeal. Everyone can, on some level, relate to that idea whether it is Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" or "The Browning Version" or the more modern "About Schmidt" these films offer life lessons. It may seem cliche but you come away feeling, its best to do what makes you happy in life. And then you leave the theatre and realize, life doesn't work that way.
The woman looking back on her life in "The Life Before Her Eyes" is Diana McFee (Uma Thurman). She has a young daughter, Emma (Gabrielle Brennan) and a husband, Paul (Brett Cullen). Many years ago, when Diana was a high school student (this time played by Evan Rachel Wood) she and her best friend Maureen (Eva Amurri, daughter of Susan Sarandon) are victims of a school shooting.
The structure of the film is manly flashbacks as Perlman keeps showing us bits and pieces of the eventful day and clashing it with the present as Diana tries to cope with the 15th anniversary of that day and her daughter's own problems at school. Is life repeating itself?
Lots of people did not like the flashback structure. Maybe they found it confusing or distracting, as one critic did. I liked this device because it clearly shows us the line being drawn between Diana now and as a child. It also adds to our emotional impact because we know how things have turned out.
The film, which was based on a novel written by Laura Kasischke and adapted to screen by Emil Stern, is not a film with a large audience base. It is a small film which can and did get lost in the shuffle. But despite such negative buzz surrounding the film, I think those with an open mind will enjoy the film. The performances are pitch perfect. As was the case with "House of Sand & Fog" and the Jennifer Connelly character, Perelman knows how to direct females. And with this film he really gets into a feminine mindset. Wood, who started to gain lots of attention after her work in "Thirteen", another one of my favorite films of 2003, once again plays the trouble teen, though this role doesn't demand the ultra realism of that film. And Thurman tones it down ten notches from her work in "Kill Bill".
"The Life Before Her Eyes" is a poetic look at human hopes and dreams and how sadly we sometimes never reach our potential. It may be one of the year's best.
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