Even if you don’t know going into it that The Life Before Her Eyes has a twist ending, it won’t take long to figure out that the filmmakers are keeping something from you, and that there is a Big Secret just waiting to be revealed in the film’s final few minutes. If you’ve seen enough movies with twist endings (where “enough” is, like, two), then you should also be able to guess what the twist will be, and thus spend at least half the movie alternating between thinking, “I bet that’s what the twist is” and “That can’t be the twist, it’s too obvious.” Let me assure you: The twist is exactly what you think it is, and it pretty much invalidates any emotional investment you can work up before it arrives.
It doesn’t help that director Perelman invests every mundane scene with portent and dread, so that the potentially interesting pre-twist drama loses any sense of realism that it might otherwise have had. The story, which switches back and forth between Wood as irresponsible high-school student Diana and Thurman as her grown-up self 15 years later, could have been an interesting rumination on survivor’s guilt; early on we see that Diana was witness to a horrific school massacre that may have taken the life of her best friend (Amurri).
Or, well, maybe not. Perelman plays one particular scene over and over, in which the student killer corners Diana and her friend in the bathroom and forces them to choose which one will die, making it crushingly obvious that Things Are Not What They Seem. He ladles on the slo-mo and the lens flares, and throws in seemingly random close-ups of flowers and insects that make the movie look like a commercial for allergy medicine (albeit a very pretty one). Every line of dialogue is forced to carry serious metaphorical weight, and minor characters casually make horribly pretentious, pseudo-profound pronouncements.
Wood is practiced enough at playing the rebellious but intelligent teenager that she comes off well, but all Thurman gets to do is weep and wail, which she does with a sort of twitchy awkwardness. Once the twist comes, it negates her entire performance anyway, so you can hardly blame her for not giving it her all.
The Life Before Her Eyes
***
Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, Eva Amurri
Directed by Vadim Perelman
Rated R
Opens Friday, May 16