Movie review: 'Life Before Her Eyes' a puzzle wrapped in a premonition

Blossoms that bloom, morph, change and decay fill the opening credits of "The Life Before Her Eyes," a handsome and intriguing puzzle film. The cycle of birth, change and death is a constant undercurrent throughout the film, both in the visual imagery and the story line.

The film centers around Diana (played as a teenager by Evan Rachel Wood and in adulthood by Uma Thurman). In her youth, Diana was the survivor of a Columbine-like high school shooting. As the 15th anniversary of the tragedy nears, the adult Diana is haunted by traumatic memories and unsettling premonitions.

The film hints at a story line as we float between Diana then (a promiscuous pot smoker) and now (an art lecturer with a picture-perfect professor husband and daughter). High school Diana debates morality with her goody-two-shoes best friend Maureen (Eva Amurri). Thurman's corrugated brow and anguished eyes suggest grown-up Diana is dealing with major guilt issues, but director Vadim Perelman ("House of Sand and Fog") implies everything and spells out nothing -- in story terms, at least. Visually, the film is humid with water imagery from swimming pools, sprinklers, burst pipes and rain.

Based on the acclaimed novel by Laura Kasischke, the film abounds with literary flourishes. The pivotal scene, replayed in ever-greater detail, shows Diana and Maureen cowering in their school lavatory while the shooter plays eenie-meenie-minie-moe with his gun. Then the flashback -- if that's what it is -- ends and we return to the present -- if that's what it is.

Wood and Thurman are well paired as young and mature incarnations of the same woman, often wearing similar petal-flecked floral prints. Their naturalistic performing styles synch seamlessly. The less well known Amurri (Susan Sarandon's daughter, with those huge, expressive eyes) has a warmth that makes the unlikely friendship between "the virgin and the whore" plausible.

The film builds to a last-minute twist, but fans of Ambrose Bierce, "The Twilight Zone" or M. Night Shayamalan should be able to guess the big revelation. Even the title is a hint: What happens when your life flashes before your eyes? As the Zombies oldie that cycles through the soundtrack hints, "Please don't bother trying to find her / She's not there."

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186