An overwrought and patently offensive anti-abortion drama from the director of the accomplished House of Sand and Fog. Director Vadim Perelman doesn't play fair.
The Life Before Her Eyes (2008)
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Reviews Counted:91
Fresh:22
Rotten:69
Average Rating:4.4/10
Consensus: Despite earnest performances, Life Before Her Eyes is a confusing, painfully overwrought melodrama.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for violent and disturbing content, language and brief drug use
Runtime: 90 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Apr 18, 2008 Limited
Box Office: $166,373
Synopsis: Imaginative, impetuous and wild, Diana (Evan Rachel Wood) can’t wait for her adult life to begin. Whiling away the final days of high school in the lush springtime, Diana tests her limits with sex... Imaginative, impetuous and wild, Diana (Evan Rachel Wood) can’t wait for her adult life to begin. Whiling away the final days of high school in the lush springtime, Diana tests her limits with sex and drugs as her more conservative friend Maureen (Eva Amurri) watches with concern. But Diana’s aura of invincibility is shattered when a senseless act of violence erupts at school, forever changing the lives of the two best friends. Fifteen years later, a grown Diana (Uma Thurman) is still trying to come to terms with the traumatic events of that fateful day. On the surface, the adult Diana has made a picture perfect life for herself. She’s still living in the sleepy Connecticut suburb she grew up in with her husband Paul, a professor at the local college. Her beautiful young daughter, Emma, is smart and creative, and possesses a fiercely independent streak reminiscent of her mother. But all is not well—as the anniversary of her adolescent trauma approaches, the darkness that Diana has tried to escape closes in. Meanwhile, her husband has become increasingly absent, her daughter has taken to hiding from teachers, and worst of all, Diana’s own grip on reality is starting to falter. Moving seamlessly through both stages of Diana’s evolution, THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES delves deep into the crossroads that we all face—where a simple decision can change the course of everything to come, and where a lifetime can be encapsulated in a single moment. With THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES, Vadim Perelman, director of the acclaimed HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, has established himself as one of America’s greatest young directors of serious, probing drama. --© Magnolia [More]
Starring: Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, Eva Amurri, Oscar Isaac
Starring: Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, Eva Amurri, Oscar Isaac, Gabrielle Brennan
Director: Vadim Perelman
Director: Vadim Perelman
Screenwriter: Emil Stern
Producer: Vadim Perelman, Aimee Peyronnet, Anthony Katagas
Composer: James Horner
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
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Reviews for The Life Before Her Eyes
With over eight months left in the year, it requires a certain audacity to declare that The Life Before Her Eyes is, and will always be, the absolute worst film of 2008 ...
...profoundly confusing In Bloom arrives at some very tenuous moral conclusions that might alienate much of its supposed target audience.
And then, THUD. Like an Acme anvil, the ending smashes everything to smithereens and you're left as discouraged as Wile E. Coyote.
That the ending doesn't play fair with the audience is a misdemeanor; the felony is that the filmmakers don't seem to realize what an ugly moral statement they're making with it.
A touching tale from director Vadim Perelman with a surprise ending that leaves you plenty to ponder.
[J]ust when you think you're getting an interesting movie about women and their travails and triumphs, the whiffs of a Shocking! Twist! Ending! begin to appear."
What this film knows about grief, you could put in a haiku. (It’d read: “Death sucks, like really/Nothing else matters, ever/Therapy—what’s that?”)
Uma Thurman delivers a mesmerizing performance in The Life Before Her Eyes, a film that, once seen and fully digested, exerts the same haunting pull as the shattering events it chronicles.
[Perelman] over-explains everything at the end with a montage of repeated scenes that ensures you never need see this film more than once.
Damn if the title The Life Before Her Eyes doesn’t give away director Vadel Perelman’s entire conceit!
THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES starts off as superficial, sentimental trite, then turns into an incoherent journey into God knows what.
The Life Before Her Eyes has the core of an inventive narrative and a twist that probably worked better as a literary device.
Too many of the scenes, however, are the standard fodder of which mediocre movies are made.
If The Life Before Her Eyes has a message, it is that life is too short to squander on foolhardy meaninglessness. Take the film's advice. Stay away.
The roles are superbly realized by Wood and Thurman, but the real backbone of the picture is Perelman, who takes great care to weave the small tragedies into a wounded whole.
The talented crew and ensemble did everything they could to raise an incredibly flawed screenplay above its Lifetime TV Movie roots but ultimately could only take it so far.
Diana pays for her bad choices perpetually, in large part through her self-comparisons to M, whose piety she alternately teases and reveres.
A thoughtful, if sentimental, semi-successful attempt to craft a drama about life and choice around the difficult subject matter of a school shooting.
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