The Life Before Her Eyes

 Dream Life
It has been five years since director Adam Perelman made the cathartic, redemptive, over-poweringly sad, "The House of Sand and Fog" based on the novel by Andre Dubus III and he has returned with the beautifully photographed (by Pawel Edelman), "The Life Before My Eyes."
"Eyes" is really two movies or more to the point the story of Diana (Evan Rachel Wood as a teenager and Uma Thurman as an adult) told in two alternating ways: as a teen and as a happily married adult with a beautiful child and husband.
The basic story here is very well served by Perelman and his screenwriter Emil Stern but there is something amiss.
The characters are interesting but this has more to do with Thurman and Wood than it does with the way this story is directed and written. Perelman throws a lot of stuff at us: mean, secretive nuns, misty woods, a Columbine-style teenage boy rampage and the centerpiece of the film: a "Sophie's Choice" decision by Diana which colors the entire film as well as the rest of Diana's life. As the movie cuts between Diana as a rebellious teenager and Diana as an insecure adult, the sense that something is not quite right with her grows. Diana seems unable to process her past as an experience from which to base her present, both of which have the eerie quality of dreams. The restlessness of her youth seems to have turned into a constant uneasiness in adulthood, and it's a recurring motif in the adult Diana's life that she always seems to be searching for someone or something: her friend, her daughter (who has a disturbing habit of running away and disappearing for hours), the supposed happiness from a life well lived. Unfortunately, there is also a sealed-in/vacuumed quality to "Eyes" that keeps it all from being truly involving.
The biggest revelation of "Eyes" though is the assured, commanding performance of Evan Rachel Wood. At last Wood shows us what she is really made of as an actor: devastating performance.
The denouement is alternately mildly surprising and bewildering at the same time: bewildering because Perelman had a solid chance to delve deeper into his characters psyches but choose instead to pretty much give us a surface reading. And as such "The Life Before Her Eyes" is an interesting though not entirely successful film.
April 19, 2008

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