Release Date: April 18, 2008 (limited)
Rating: R (for violent and disturbing content, language and brief drug use)
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 90 min.
Director: Vadim Perelman
Actors: Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, Eva Amurri, Gabrielle Brennan, Sherman Alpert, Brett Cullen
Take a look at recent box-office hits, and what do you find? 21, Street Kings, Vantage Point, Never Back Down, 10,000 B.C.—male-dominated films aimed at male audiences. Where are the films with strong female roles?
One of this year’s few female-driven films, The Life Before Her Eyes, is sparked by a strong performance from Evan Rachel Wood (Across the Universe) and a leading role for Uma Thurman, who portrays the same character 15 years later. Both play Diana, who we meet as a high-school student dreaming of a way out of her small town. She’s friends with Maureen (Eva Amurri), who regularly attends a Pentecostal church. Together they fret about their dating lives and future plans, which are thrown into chaos when fellow student Michael (John Magaro) goes on a rampage at their high school, shooting several students before confronting Diana and Maureen in the girls’ bathroom and presenting them with a choice: One of them must die, and they must choose between themselves who will be the victim.
The incident, which echoes the Columbine and Virginia Tech school shootings, comes early in the film, which then cuts away from the fatal encounter to show us Diana as a grown woman, now played by Thurman. Married to a professor (Brett Cullen), Diana spends her days in an increasingly fragile state, trying to keep herself strong while dealing with the struggles of her daughter at the same Catholic school Diana once attended. Diana’s increasingly delicate condition is exacerbated by the approaching anniversary of the high-school shooting, which she plans to commemorate in her own way.
These latter-day scenes of Diana’s struggles are interwoven with glimpses of her earlier high-school experiences. Branded a slut as a teen, Diana begins to live down to her image. She takes up with an older boy, gets pregnant, and has an abortion. She reacts harshly when Maureen gently questions her about her actions, although the friends quickly reconcile. Director Vadim Perelman, adapting a novel by Laura Kasischke, sporadically cuts back to that fateful scene in the bathroom years earlier, the resolution of which, we come to realize, holds the key to the film’s meaning.