I saw this movie because my girlfriend said that it was an OK-movie. After checking the rating at IMDb.com decided to watch it. The movie gives a good view what it does to a person surviving something horrible whilst others die giving the surviving person a feeling of guild. The flashbacks give you an insight what happened the fatal day and how the two young girls are. A flaw in the story us that if someone experiences this kind of nightmare it is really unbelievable that she stays living in the same town and even starts giving class in the school where it happened. This is very unlikely! But the big disappointment was the ending were Diana was shot four times at close range with an automatic weapon whilst the other was apparently not hurt but as I understand the movie correctly the one who was shot stayed alive and the other one died??? Not possible!! Therefore I can not recommend this movie. After the initial review of this movie I had a discussion with my girlfriend and she said that everything that we saw happening to the grown-up Diana was all she saw before her eyes when the killer asked who to shot. And because she did not like what she saw she said also to the killer to shoot her and not her girlfriend. That would explain that she could not survive with four time shot.... You probably need to be a woman to understand something like this and for me it means even stronger that it was a mistake to watch this movie. For you guys: do not watch it!!! You have been warned!

This film is a beautiful and lyrical meditation of what could have been. What if things would have happened differently? The Life before her Eyes is the second film from director Vadim Perelman, whose first film The House of Sand and Fog brought wide critical praise. It was nominated for three Academy Awards, including best lead actor for Ben Kingsley.The Life Before her Eyes stars Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood playing the same character of Diana. As a teenager (Wood) she is a free spirited girl who is caught in an unthinkable situation. When a boy at school goes on a shooting rampage she and her best friend become trapped in the bathroom with him. The story then flashes forward and we see Diana all grown up with a husband and a young daughter. She is continually haunted by the events of that day and the kind of person she was back then. She tries to protect and nurture her daughter onto a better path but she looks to be failing. Her husband is a professor at a local college and could be having and affair.The plot swaps back a fourth between the young Diana and her best friend Maureen, played by Ava Amurri and the older Diana and her family. It chronicles the building of young girls' friendship and how they have arrived to the point when they are facing down the gunman. While Maureen is religious and chaste, Diana is quite liberal and currently seeing an older man. They are complete opposite personalities, but as friends they were made for each other.The movie is beautifully shot and wonderfully acted. As far as casting goes even though Evan and Uma have similar looking faces, their body types are quite different. The time lines of events for Diana are also a bit sketchy. There is a big twist ending that is a quite debatable and could turn some people against this movie. It could also explain some of the inconsistencies. It deals with some pretty heavy issues to the point of being overstuffed, but it is a good experience overall. The DVD contains many special features including a director's commentary.

This film shows us some of the best cinematography I've seen in years & is a masterpiece. Ukranian born Vadim Perelman comes back with sheer & utter blinding talent on this film after his debut as a screenwriter and director for House of Sand & Fog (2003) starring Ben Kingsley & Jennifer Connelly. Cinema is much more interesting when new directors try new exciting ways of telling a story. I can't wait to see Perelman's third film Poltergeist hopefully to be out in 2013.Creating the sequences in The Life Before Her Eyes must have been nerve-racking; trying to decipher life into tiny moments by editing various time frames together to make an extremely intelligent and complex interplay of images. We seldom if ever find a film that captures the fleetingness of life in such a philosophical and allegorical way. The use of a superb mixture of images, motif, sound, timing, smart dialogue, use of replay for traumatic overture & cascading suspense, mystery, casting, direction, editing, & acting all give this film every ingredient for top notch rating and life-long impact.The sound conflict-resolution theme allows the viewer to expect more from this film, promising us to deliver the right message at the right time, often bring us just a step away from the precipice, but always jerking us back in the nick of time to prepare us for the next series of revealing sequences. The film quickly establishes the main characters, who play a very important role in the telling. Diana is doubly played as young (Evan Rachel Wood) and the 15 years older (Uma Thurman). Both roles are played with believability. Wood holds her own against the backdrop of a much more mature Thurman since Wood's eyes look to tell everything about her in seconds. A picture can do that, yet not many actors are interesting enough to have that Hollywood starlet allure, yet both Wood & Thurman seem to capture the essence of the role and play it convincingly well.Funny that the working title of this film was changed from "In Bloom" back to The Life Before Her Eyes". It would almost seem a better name for the film as to not give away the experience of watching the film unfold without any clues or cues as to what may transpire. The Turkish title Bir nefeste hayat translates out to "The Life in a breath".Certain lines in this films tend to set you on either euphoria or the precipice. The lines most interestingly positioned in the film for maximum effect are "Conscience is the voice of GOD, the nature and heart of man." "The heart is the body's strongest organ." A fact "72% of the body is composed of water. Also, when Michael says "If I don't kill you, who should I kill?" Symbolism is used throughout this film. The master of symbols used in this film has to be the symbolic nature of water to represent life & death. We see this death metaphor played out in humanity with the phrases "River of Life", "Crossing Over Jordan", & the piercing of Jesus's side & the mixing of blood with water. The secondary motif often used is flowing blood. A third motif is blinding fog.James Horner, who also worked with the director of this film on House of Sand and Fog, delivers a haunting music score, which adds to the David Lynchian style of sensory overload. The overall haunting effect of this film on your senses makes this 2002 novel written by Laura Kasischke a perfect career debut film choice for screenplay writer Emil Stern III wrote the screenplay for Tenderness (2009 Russell Crow).

I really have to question whether the people who reviewed this film in a positive way did, in fact, work on the film. It's just so bad and pretentious. And was this film not already made...Gus Van Sant's film, albeit a different point of view?! The script is clearly dreadful and how they ever got Vadim Perelman involved in this mess is beyond me. I don't see any of the directing skill from House of Sand and Fog. The flashbacks are really cheap and the whole film is just full of obvious device. This was a bad script that got some notable talent attached and somehow made it to production. And what a mistake that was. The Life Before Her Eyes should have been killed in development.