I watched this movie after being hassled by a friend because apparently it would make me cry. And i like a movie that can bring on the water works!

It stars 'Uma Therman' but throughout the movie there are 2 time periods being shown. Uma plays the older version on Diana, and the younger by 'Evan Rachel Wood' and her performance was phenomenal!

PLOT:

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. Then the two teens are involved in a Columbine-like shooting incident at their school and are forced to make an impossible choice. Only one of them can live...

15 years later Diana (Uma Thurman) is married and has a daughter. A memorial service at her high school brings back old memories and as past and present start to intertwine her husband and daughter become increasingly absent and Diana finds her life slipping away.

The central theme of both the novel and the film is the loss of lives in these shooting incidents. Laura Mischance and Vladimir Perelman took an interesting approach to drive that point home that slowly leads up to a shocking realisation about Diana.

I haven't read the book so i can make no comment on that aspect. but i thought the movie was really well made, from hearing the plot-line you can see that it's quite demanding, but i think it was done very well.

'The Life Before Her Eyes' received generally negative reviews from critics. As of April 23, 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 29% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 35 reviews — with the consensus being the film is "a confusing, painfully overwrought melodrama." But i really liked the fact that it made you think, i was ready for that going into it so i wasn't disappointed by it!

Linked to Shark Tale as both are produced by Dreamworks.


I went to see this at the cinema during the weekend. The film is certificated as an 18 because it has outright violence in it, but i thought that it could have been a 15 easily. The violence is not made to look realistic, the only really gory bit is where the lady is thrown in the fire and you have to watch her burn. The certificate should mean a smaller audience as you are looking at adults who also like musical thrillers. i think many cinemas turned a blind eye to this certificate, by letting under 18's into the film. This may be because they knew otherwise they may not get a very big audience.

Overall I was disappointed by this film, although it looked really good; the costumes were beautiful, the use of colours was amazing, the shots were well planned (so it seemed) and it was all in context to the historical time period. The plot was thin, and although this is a Thriller so nothing is supposed to be resolved, the lack of closure on some subjects such as joanna and the sailor, left me feeling as if there should be more to the film. I also felt somewhat cheated by the lack of really catchy songs.
they say that a marketing tool, especially for musicals is to have memorable songs and through people generally singing the songs a certain hype begins to bring in a wider audience. Sadly the songs were not catchy and so there was no hype about the fact it was a musical.
I don't think i'd recommend this film to a friend unless they enjoyed films that were pleasing to the eye but unstimulating for the mind.