Stephanie Daley

Review By: Brian DePasquale
BrianDePasquale @TheCinemaSource.com

Boy do I have good news for sex ed teachers. The issues of teen pregnancy and abortion are fully outlined by Sundance Film Festival award winner Stephanie Daley when it gains a limited release in theaters this week. Three cheers for sappy melodrama!

The film tells the story of young Stephanie Daley (Amber Tamblyn) who is on a ski trip with her classmates. We see her bloody footsteps in the snow and she falls to the ground. She was pregnant and claims she did not know. Before going to court on charges that she concealed her pregnancy and murdered her child, Daley meets with forensic psychologist Lydie Crane (Tilda Swinton) to discuss the incident. Lucky for us, Lydie is currently pregnant and also lost a stillborn child last year.

Lifetime, television for women, eat your heart out.

The story is told well, despite its after school special feel. The main female characters are well-conceived. The plot has an interesting structure and idea, although I am not so sure it is executed very well. The mirroring of it’s central characters gives Stephanie Daley a unique but unlikely tone. I do not know much about law, but I would think a woman like Lydie would be taken off a case like this because of conflict of interest. Should a woman who lost a child really be analyzing a case about a young girl who went through the same thing? If she is analyzing the case for the prosecution, would the prosecution really benefit from her advice?

Other than showing us a tough relationship between a husband and wife being torn apart because of their problems with pregnancy, the subplot between Lydie and her man does not offer much within the realm of theme or meaning. All it suggests is one of the film’s favorite ideas.

In this movie, men are disgusting vile pigs. The message seems to be do not converse with them because they could impregnate you. They could try to convince you to cheat on your husband. They could even blame you for the loss of the child they conceived with you! Maybe if we get rid of all the men in the world, then we would not have to deal with all these problems. Yes, that seems like a great idea!

The film would not feel as manipulative if I knew what it was about. Stephanie Daley is one of the few message films I have ever seen with nothing to say. Over the course of ninety minutes, writer/director Hilary Brougher presents lots of interesting situations through which serious issues come across, but rarely has the skill or patience to flesh them out. The film is so preoccupied with telling us everything Daley did up until she gave birth that it offers little screen time for the aftermath.

I cannot call the film preachy because it does not preach. That is a ...