THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES

Suprize lackin akshul suprize

By David Wildman

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The proliferation in pop culture of stories that have twist endings is a self-defeating phenomenon. It only serves to put you on guard waiting for the unexpected turnaround, and your diligence often destroys the carefully crafted surprise.

Sometimes films are so built around the twist that there's nothing there without it, like The Village. M. Night Shyamalan made some great twist films, like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable; but audiences were then expecting him to deliver on fooling them, the result being he went on to make some bad movies with good twists. Then he just made some bad movies.

Jacob's Ladder was one film that did it right, the weird metaphysical turnarounds at the end proving haunting and deeply effective. Atonement dropped the ball, the book worked much better. In the case of The Life Before Her Eyes we have the opposite situation, an OK movie with a groaner of a twist that, although inevitable, slights everything that came before it.

What keeps the film watchable are the basics: good writing and acting. Director Vadim Perelman, responsible for the hide-the-razorblades downer House of Sand and Fog, keeps things popping along in a lively manner, and his visual stylizations are evocative without drowning the action. Evan Rachel Wood plays Diana, a high school girl who finds herself in the bathroom with her friend Maureen (Eva Amurri) as a kid goes Columbine all over the school with a machine gun. They hear screams and gunshots and stand there idiotically discussing the situation instead of climbing out a window or something. Eventually the dude busts into the ladies room, points the gun at both of them and forces them to choose which one dies. This portentous scene repeats throughout the film, gradually developing further each time.

The rest of the story happens 15 years later when Diana has grown up and turned into Uma Thurman, an art teacher with a bratty precocious daughter and an older professor for a husband. It's clear sailing once you've accepted the Evan/Uma thing, although the film doesn't make it easy by showing rows of computers at the school in Wood's time period—placing it in present day—and then having Thurman's surroundings in 2023 look exactly the same. The ending explains it away, but at that point it's too late because it's already irked you for 90 minutes.

The more engaging part of the story is the earlier era, with Wood turning in one of her better, more nuanced performances of late, after having to fuck Ed Norton endlessly in Down in the Valley and do her part in fucking up Augusten Burroughs' great book Running With Scissors. The plot is generally pretty aimless, mostly involving her whore/virgin relationship with Maureen. Amurri, who is Susan Sarandon's kid, and possesses her large, languid eyes, does a good job as the shy one of the pair who nevertheless has the strongest backbone. There is good chemistry between the two actresses, and the metaphysical dialogue for the most part works. Uma as the future Diana doesn't really have a lot to do besides mope around dropping clues to the mystery and gradually losing her shit completely.

In a twist film like this all the plot and character development goes to the setup. If you watch it again, everything will seem so obvious you won't believe that you were fooled in the first place, assuming you even were. But even though there are a lot of good elements of filmmaking at work here, by the time The Life Before Her Eyes passes by you, chances are good you probably won't ever want to sit through it again.

THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES

RATED | R

OPENS | 4.25 At the Kendall Sq. Cinema

PQ: The more engaging part of the story is the earlier era, with Wood turning in one of her better, more nuanced performances of late, after having to fuck Ed Norton endlessly in Down in the Valley and do her part in fucking up Augusten Burroughs great book Running With Scissors.