Stephanie Daley (2006)

When 16 year-old Stephanie Daley (Amber Tamblyn) faces murder charges in connection with the death of her baby pregnant forensic-psychologist Lydie Crane (Tilda Swinton) is tapped to unravel the truth. The teen claims to have been unaware of her condition but as their sessions intensify Stephanie s state of denial and Lydie s fears regarding her own pregnancy reveal a destiny that intertwines them both. System Requirements:Run Time: 92 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 796019804820 Manufacturer No: 80482 Product Description

VVVVEEEERRRRYYYY SSSSLLLLOOOOWWWW!

CCCCAAAANNNN YYYYOOOOUUUU SSSSAAAAYYYY TTTTHHHHEEEE WWWWOOOORRRRDDDD SSSSLLLLOOOOWWWW?
This has got to be one of the slowest moving movies of all time! I could have gotten up, driven to the store going the speed limit, driven back home going the speed limit, cooked dinner, popped open a soda, eaten dinner, washed the dishes, sat back down to watch the movie, and probably not missed a thing!
Another reviewer said it all in two words, and I believe that is all that needs to be said...aside from the very well done bathroom scene, which earned the second star of the two, this movie was:
1. contrived
2. ambiguous
Roger Ebert has it all wrong!
Definitely not worth the time or the money!
BOOOOOO! March 12, 2008

Stephanie Daley -

Short reveiw on a good movie - I don't want to spoil it.

Lydie Crane (Tilda Swinton)is a psychologist who interviews Stephanie Daley (Amber Tamblyn) about the incident that happened on a school skiing trip, for the court side of the case. Stephanie is accused of murdering her newborn child.

-Stephanie collapses with blood at her feet while skiing.
She didn't know she was pregnant.
-Lydie Crane wants to keep her marriage alive and have a baby. Lydie recently had a still born.

The interweaving of the lives of these two individuals as they look through their past, their present and hopes for the future is done very well. This is a very well acted, deep thought movie.

4 stars


March 2, 2008

intriguing human drama

***1/2

In "Stephanie Daley," Tilda Swinton stars as Lydie Crane, a forensic psychologist in her final months of pregnancy. Despite her condition and the fact that she had a miscarriage less than a year earlier, Lydie agrees to take on the case of a teenaged girl named Stephanie Daley (Amber Tamblyn) who is accused of killing her newborn at childbirth.

Written and directed by Hilary Brougher, "Stephanie Daley" is a human drama wrapped inside a legal whodunit (it's sort of like "Agnes Of God" minus the nuns' habits and beatific visions). Set in scenic Upstate New York, the movie explores the anxieties and fears that many women face before, during and after pregnancy. Lydie's situation very much parallels Stephanie's at times, resulting in a strange symbiotic relationship between the two women. Those parallels aren't always as clearly drawn as they might be, but the positive result is that the story is made less obvious and more intriguing by the ambiguity.

"Stephanie Daley" is a low-keyed, thoughtful work that doesn't go in for flashy melodrama or thematic overstatement. It allows its narrative to unfold slowly, finding much of its drama in the minutiae of everyday life in the small town in which it is set.

The movie is blessed with sensitive, subtle work from not only Swinton and Tamblyn but a large cast of secondary performers, including Timothy Hutton, Kel O'Neill, Denis O'Hare, and others. The relationships in the movie are intricate and complex, and the plot doesn't seek out a preset path or formula to follow. It's not a movie designed to appeal to mainstream audiences much, but for those who prefer their films to wander a bit off the well-beaten path, "Stephanie Daley" offers substantial rewards. February 19, 2008

Powerful performances from Swinton and Tamblyn, portraying two opposite ends of the motherhood spectrum

The 16-year-old title character of the film Stephanie Daley (played by Amber Tamblyn) gave birth to a child on a school ski trip, disposing of the premature infant's body in the ski resort restroom. Coldly dubbed the "Ski Mom" by the local media, Stephanie is charged with murdering her own baby immediately following childbirth. Incredibly, Stephanie claims that she did not know she was pregnant, and that her child was stillborn. Forensic psychologist Lydie Crane (Tilda Swinton in a mesmerizing performance) is assigned to determine Stephanie's mental condition and root out the truth behind the incident.

Swinton's character recently experienced a stillbirth, and she is expecting again. The film probes the lives of these two women, both of whom have domestic turmoil (a hard-hearted father for Stephanie, an emotionally distant husband for Swinton), revealing that media coverage of headline-grabbing crimes rarely scratches the surface of the true issues at hand. Stephanie attends a school with abstinence-only curriculum, has an offensively abrasive male teacher, and lives in quiet isolation from her overbearing, insecure father and retrained mother. What options does a girl in that situation have when she becomes unintentionally pregnant after her first, furtive sexual encounter? As we view flashbacks into the lives of both Stephanie and psychologist Lydie, the viewer discovers that even Lydie struggled with the proper disposal and memorial for her stillborn child.

Screenwriter Hilary Brougher has crafted an austere storyline that is hauntingly true-to-life, with no neat conclusion in the last ten minutes of screentime. The viewer is left with the same questions Lydie and Stephanie struggle with. Whose fault was it that Lydie miscarried her first child, and that her marriage has never recovered? Whose fault was it that a teenager got pregnant and chose denial over confronting her mistakes? February 7, 2008

Confusing and disempowering message

Superb acting and unusually realistic portrayals of high school life don't save this movie from its slow pace, artificially contrived premise, and unresolved ambiguities that leave the viewer dangling.

Tilda Swanton plays Lydie Crane, a pregnant forensic psychologist who is still reeling from a stillborn birth just months earlier. Amber Tamblyn, the star of TV's quirky "Joan of Arcadia," plays Stephanie Daley, a confused Christian girl who has somehow lost an accidental pregnancy. Did she murder the premature fetus, or was it born dead? The prosecutor hires Crane to find out.

As a forensic psychologist, I was looking forward to seeing this movie. Instead, I found it hopelessly confused and confusing. The distinctions between the legal concepts of competency (the current ability to comphrehend one's situation and stand trial) and sanity (a past mental state pertaining to the time of an offense) are muddied. Far more troublingly, filmmaker Hilary Braugher confuses moral and legal guilt. One is not legally guilty of killing a baby for merely wishing it dead! And most troubling of all, Crane foists her own ambivalent psychological state onto this confused teenage girl, essentially using her empathetic interviewing skills to collude in the girl's exploitation. In real life (which I realize doesn't have much connection to the movies) Crane's violations of her professional role boundaries would be unethical; Crane probably should have declined a case with so many troubling parallels to her own circumstances.

The movie tackles complex issues about religion, fate versus choice, and women's fear of giving birth. And it has a superficial allure of feminism in its focus on the female experience. But in the end, its message is far from empowering. Should a teen girl really [SPOILER ALERT - DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE AND WANT TO MAINTAIN THE SUSPENSE] go to prison for five years for mere bad thoughts? I breathed a sigh of relief that there aren't too many real-life Lydie Cranes running around to assist such judicial railroads. Also, that I'd seen my last dead deer for awhile.
November 4, 2007

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