Adapted from Laura Kasischke's novel of the same name, The Life Before Her Eyes is an intense, harrowing drama about a woman (Uma Thurman) who is having a hard time keeping her perfect life together on the 20-year-anniversary of the Columbine-style high school shooting she survived. As the 
date comes closer, she keeps thinking of the troubled, rebellious girl she was (played by Evan Rachel Wood) and her unlikely friendship with the conservative Maureen (Eva Amurri) that was forever changed by the event.
If you saw director Vadim Perelman's freshman feature, House of Sand and Fog, you know he likes to make aesthetically beautiful, uber-serious, emotionally somber films and this one is no different. True to his Ukranian roots, Perelman does not produce what one would call light fare. But, while the solemn aura inhabiting The Life Before Her Eyes is indeed heavy, it manages to avoid melodrama. And although the movie basically investigates all the nooks and crannies of the relationship between two young women, as well as the emotional interiors of survivor's guilt, it's not a movie that only women can appreciate. Indeed, the surprises Perelman has for you along the way will blow your mind and have you talking hours after you leave the theater.
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