There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13, New Living Translation)

Based on Laura Kasischeke’s novel of the same name, director Vadim Perelman’s film adaptation unflinchingly preserves the haunting psychological intrigue as he explores how one single decision—one tragic moment—can plague the rest of a person’s life.

The Life Before Her Eyes tells the story of two high school seniors and unlikely best friends, Diana and Maureen. The more adventuresome Diana eagerly anticipates the “official” genesis of her adult life, exploring the edges of teen life through sex and drugs. At the other end of the spectrum is Maureen: the straight-and-narrow “good” girl, an active and faithful Christian who serves as Diana’s rock in the midst of teen turmoil. The friendship is put to the ultimate test, however, when a Columbine-style shooting erupts at their school. When the gunman corners the two girls in the bathroom, he forces them to make what is almost certainly the most horrific choice of their lives: they must decide, together, who will die, and who will survive.

Without divulging the outcome, the terrifying opening scene fades. Fast-forward fifteen years to the grown-up Diana, living in the same sleepy Connecticut town, with a gorgeous home, a young daughter, a philosophy-professor husband, and her own occupation as a teacher. She is convinced that if she can help her students she can somehow make peace with all of the killings she witnessed.

As the anniversary of the school shooting approaches, however Diana starts to lose her grip on reality. She thinks she sees a dead teacher on the street, as well as vividly seeing images and scenes from her high school years. Add to that her daughter’s natural (if ill-timed) exhibition of minor rebellions—hiding from her teachers at school, talking back to her mother—and the intensity of Diana’s slow breakdown increases as the day of the anniversary of the shooting nears.

The film systematically flashes back to Diana’s and Maureen’s life together in high school—their developing closeness, their different life perspectives—then returning to show Diana’s adult life and her difficulties dealing with her crumbling family and her downward spiral toward madness. Each time the film flashes back to the fateful moment in the bathroom, more of the scene is revealed.

The film asks the question, “What would you do?”—not only in the moment itself, but in living with the outcome as we watch Diana’s life unravel. The survivor’s guilt is not just that she lives through something that others did not, but that she lives because others, namely her best friend, did not.

Evan Rachel Wood as the young Diana, and Uma Thurman as her older counterpart, both offer fantastic performances, without over-acting. With the subtlety of a veteran actress, Wood captures the ambivalence of being a girl who wants to be a woman yet fears what that entails. Thurman, downplaying her oft-used overt sexuality, deftly portrays a terrorized mind with delicacy instead of hysterical madness..

Kudos to the filmmakers as well who successfully avoid making Maureen into a kooky-crazy, judgmental Christian. While some of the things her character talks about—like speaking in tongues and “waves of the Holy Spirit”—may be off-putting to a non-churched viewer, her experiences are not mocked, nor does she ridicule Diana’s choices. Instead, she is a true, supportive, loving friend regardless of Diana’s actions, without turning up a judgmentally snobbish nose. Even when Diana lands in the muck, Maureen is there. It is a pleasure to see a character on film who is obviously not only true to her faith, but understands that such faith requires love as well.

As the film slowly climbs to its dramatic peak, the audience is drawn into not only the difficulty of making moral decisions, but also into vacillating ambivalence between empathy and shame for Diana. People of faith may wonder if they could be as strong as Maureen, loving Diana so deeply despite her sin, even being willing to die for her friend. Life brings up multiple questions and concepts that there is value in pursuing, and it does a worthy job of exploring them.

Life Before Her Eyes is rated R for violent and disturbing content, sexual situations, drug use and language. While this is not a “hard R,” the shooting scenes especially are fairly disturbing.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jennie attended a Promotional screening of The Life Before her Eyes.