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The Life Before her Eyes
The second feature from Russian-born
filmmaker Vadim Perelman, whose 2003 directorial debut House of Sand
and Fog was nominated for two Academy Awards, The Life Before Her
Eyes opens with a seemingly typical day in the life of high school
student Diana (Evan Rachel Wood, The Wrestler) and her best
friend Maureen (Eva Amurri). The pair laugh and gossip together before
making a quick detour to the girl’s bathroom between classes. There
Maureen hears a noise – gunfire. The sound gets closer and Diane
realises the high school’s resident outcast, who one day earlier had
informed her of his intention to bring a gun to school and kill everyone
in sight, wasn’t in fact joking after all. The gunman eventually tracks
down the two girls and Diane is forced to make a decision, the terrible
ramifications of which will resonate throughout every aspect of the
seemingly idyllic middle class suburban existence she goes on to enjoy.
The Life Before Her Eyes offers a
starkly believable encapsulation of the terror that must be experienced
by students during a high school shooting, countering this by
effortlessly evoking a languid, dream-like quality during its numerous
flashback and flash-forward sequences. Uma Thurman is brilliant as the
adult Diana struggling to come to terms with the guilt she feels over
the shooting and its aftermath, and Evan Rachel Wood offers a typically
mesmerising performance as an impetuous, beautiful young woman looking
forward to the freedoms of adulthood and enjoying testing the boundaries
of convention on her journey towards graduation.
The film has been criticised for being
overly emotional and one or two critics decried what they saw as its
‘preciousness’, but Perelman’s work and the book on which it’s based
are, after all, tackling some pretty weighty themes and they do so
adroitly. The stunning cinematography is complemented by a pristine
transfer, Diana’s story is cleverly and compellingly told and the
performances are first rate. All in all this is an ambitious and highly
underrated drama, offering a philosophical take on teenage violence and
growing pains and proving markedly superior to more loudly-touted fare
such as Elephant or The Bully in the process.
Special Features
While the Region 1 edition features
interviews and featurettes Sony’s Region 4 edition, which has taken
almost three years to hit local shores, is bare bones to the point of
being skeletal – not so much as a subtitle or theatrical trailer in
sight. |
