'Life' may be too melodramatic for its own good

THE UNNERVING, traumatic and ultimately unbearable reality is that the story is still being written. In fact, it's still being lived. We're talking about the story of Columbine, Virginia Tech and other schools where guns in the hands of disturbed, deranged young people have become reality.

Once the headlines and the memorial services have passed, entire lives have to be endured, in some cases, by the survivors.

"The Life Before Her Eyes" is fiction. This, though, provides no comfort zone in present society. What was once considered melodrama is now reality.

Beginning with a frightening premise, the film, unfortunately, succumbs to the lure of melodrama as it stretches to feature length. Two high school girls, one a "wild" thing and the other religiously strict, face a life-changing choice when a teen gunman holds them captive in a high school restroom and demands they make a choice as to which one will live.

Flashes back and forth in time tease the audience endlessly about how that scene will finally end. The present time in the film is 15 years from that day, when the high school in a nondescript small town called Briar Hill is staging a memorial to remember the school massacre. The setting is too close to real events in this state for comfort.

Uma Thurman plays a grown up survivor - complete with a college professor husband and a rebellious little daughter. She mopes about in a way that makes us think she is suffering from major guilt pangs. Dropping off flowers at the memorial event, she refuses to acknowledge that she is a "survivor."

Flashbacks show that the two girls bond in believable if girlishly naughty ways. They get high. They sneak into neighbors' swimming pools. They share gossipy news about boys.

One of them is called a slut in school. They both long to escape the small-town claustrophobia.

Thurman, an actress who has wasted much of her career in action nonentities, offers a thoughtful performance. We wonder for moments at a time how the wild girl from the past has become such a solid citizen with a college prof husband.

The standout performance, though, is that of Evan Rachel Wood as the younger rebel who defies her high school critics and is eager to teach her friend about loosening up. Wood is a charismatic screen presence who deserves major stardom, but she is repeating herself too often in adolescent roles.

There is a surprise ending that one questions on logic or reality. Has the film played fair with the audience? We're still thinking about it, which is all to the good because any movie that induces serious thought is an oddity nowadays.

As crafted, it surely sneaks up on us. The director is Vadim Perelman, who was a good deal more mature and clever with "House of Sand and Fog." Here, he's perhaps more mischievous than profound in a crazed flurry that eventually becomes too melodramatic for its own good. Lay it all on, and it's too much.

Perelman didn't seem to realize that he had a profound kind of "Sophie's Choice" drama at the center of things and that it would have been enough to explore it - minus the overwrought subplots.

The echoes of real life give this film more importance than it should have. It is impossible not to hear those echoes.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com