Film

The Life Before Her Eyes (2007)

Director: Vadim Perelman

Movie review

From Time Out New York

We can’t say we weren’t warned: With one character a professor of philosophy, another enrolled at a Catholic school and a lot of loose talk about “conscience,” The Life Before Her Eyes has the makings of a pretentious mess from the get-go. This waterlogged drama stars Uma Thurman as Diana, the survivor of a Columbine-style massacre 15 years earlier. Evan Rachel Wood plays the same character in the weeks leading up to the pivotal shootings. When she’s not getting stoned or skinny-dipping with older men, the young Diana hangs out with her best friend (Amurri), a demure Pentecostal.

Even as it leans hard on the classic virgin-whore combo, the movie unwisely invites comparison to Elephant on account of both its subject and its repetitive, flashback-laden narrative. But Gus Van Sant’s inspired formalism could hardly contrast more sharply with the tiresome gimmickry of Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog). Building up to what’s supposed to be a serious moral dilemma, the noisy final act borders on incoherence. Still, The Life Before Her Eyes at least emboldens audiences to choose whether to be more appalled by the movie’s inane attempts at Christian allegory or its implication that life might not ultimately be worth living, at least if you happen to be a teenage slut.