Sometimes hitting the multiplex just isn’t in the cards. That’s when cable, the web and streaming step in to provide an instant movie fix. But how to separate the wheat from the chaff? I’m happy to help; every week I’ll pick a flick and see if it’s worth your time. This week? “The Life Before Her Eyes”.
One horrible development in this new Millennium is the frequency of high school shootings. Yes, these things happened before the 21st Century, but with the advent of social media and the Internet’s all-encompassing eye, it feels as if they’re more personal somehow. As if every bit of information tweeted, Facebooked and YouTube’d brings you in a little closer, until you’re right there beside the survivors. The Life Before Her Eyes gives audiences a peek at how survivors of horrible tragedy may go on years afterward, when “Happily Ever After” may be out of reach.
Diana and her best friend Maureen – seemingly opposite personalities that have managed to form a strong bond – make a pit-stop at the girl’s bathroom before school and find themselves trapped when a vengeful student-turned-shooter finds them. He offers them a Sophie’s Choice; which one should he shoot? Cut to 15 years later, and Diana has what seems to be the perfect life. She’s an art history professor at the college her older husband (the same professor she fell in love with when she was in high school) works for. Her beautiful little girl is in parochial school but is starting to behave just like the wild girl Diana was years before. At the 15 year anniversary of the shooting, Diana starts to unravel, and the ghosts she seemed to have kept at bay begin tearing her apart. Only at the end of the film does the entire story of that day come to light.