Stephanie Daley

I have no idea why this film, or many of the other Sundance films for that matter, are rated so low on IMDb. It's a shame, because this is a remarkable film.

Amber Tamblyn gives the best performance of her career and deserves an Oscar for her subtle, eerie picture of teenage confusion, fear and malice. Tilda Swinton is also very good as the detective investigating Daley's case, and both Melissa Leo and Timothy Hutton give solid backup.

See this movie - it is a frightening and eye-opening portrait of real life. ****/*****

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.

It's funny, at the average video store, it's really a hit or miss game - you can't tell anything by the cover art. Picking up random titles is something of a habit, some hit, most miss, and with some you really have to wonder if the people who released the film have actually watched it. Every so often, however, you get a very pleasant surprise, and Stephanie Daley is one of the reasons I love the movies.

Hilary Brougher is an extraordinary talent, and experiencing the performances by some of the finest actors working today was inspiring.

Spending an evening with this film was a breath of fresh air and a treat - thank you!

This is an American independent film starring Tilda Swinton, of which she was also an Executive Producer. The film is largely shot in natural light with very good and versatile hand-held cinematography, but the disadvantage of that is that many scenes are so badly lit that they are far too dark. And sometimes the cast do not articulate sufficiently for everything they say to be understood; this is of course in complete contrast to the perfect articulation of the highly-trained Tilda Swinton herself, who plays a forensic psychologist conducting a pre-trial examination of a girl being tried for murdering her illegitimate baby at birth. Swinton is very good, as she always is. The girl being interviewed is pregnant and so is Swinton, and Swinton has her own deep issues and also her own secret. So there is an ingenious parallelism going on here. Both of them are struggling with a pregnancy, one of 26 weeks and the other of 29 weeks, and both have really big issues and are guilty of concealment. The film is directed by a woman, Hilary Brougher, and is sensitively approached by females for females, thus avoiding any contamination by male prurience. In fact, many men would not be interested in seeing this film, so far is it from their 'world', and thus so entirely incomprehensible to the more macho types. The world of pregnancy is pretty much a closed female world rarely entered into by men, except for those husbands who like to share the experience with their wives. Amber Tamlyn plays the young girl with convincing intensity, and was aged 19 but looking much younger. This is a powerful film.

I do have somewhat of a problem with the time device used in the film, the frame narrative that I'm not quite sure works to such extent. I think by just allowing the narrative to go through without resorting to "going back in time" would've made for a much more effective ride. As it is, the film is rather good. Amber Tamblyn and the goddess Tilda Swinton give some strong work here, and both give their characters their much required pathos for which to fully function within the film's structure better. Both are great performances that deserved a lot more attention, but alas, it's good that I sought it out. I definitely recommend this flawed, but strong piece of work.