Stephanie Daley

I had no idea what to expect from this film, and by the 10 minute mark it won me over.

Tilda Swinton and Amber Tamblyn both gave stellar performances.

The script was tight, and the back and forth between the Swinton and Tamblyn was spot-on perfect.

Tamblyn's big bathroom scene was gripping and intense - a great use of the absence of sound to really hammer a point home.

The cinematography left a little to be desired - the HD format still looks like video at times.

I can see why Swinton Exec. Produced this: It was a great vehicle for her and I now have a new found respect for her as an artist.

I am looking forward to Brougher's next film - hopefully she will get a wider release this time.

The editing of the film was eerily effective - I was never once lost or confused, yet I was constantly being moved around time and space.

The ending was very satisfying - I don't need to be spoon fed every little thing.

Concise, daring script + great performances = "Stephanie Daley"

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.

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.

I watched it Saturday, along with all the special features. It was a tough movie. If you don't like indie film, you might have a hard time with it. If you do, it's an astonishing achievement. All the acting is uniformly excellent. I don't mean to undercut the obviously painstaking work Tilda Swinton did in creating her character...

...but this is Amber Tamblyn's movie. Period. Anyone who watched Joan Of Arcadia already knew she could act her heart out. But what she does here is nothing short of phenomenal. She gets every nuance of Stephanie --- someone VERY different from her own flaky, artsy hippie-chick personality --- absolutely right. There's not one minute of "acting" in her time on screen. I promise you that if you give yourself to this story you will not come out of it the same.

And you will not soon forget it.

It is strange how people can have a gigantic Hollywood budget, the whole powerful studio support system and churn clunker after clunker. Then someone like the director of this small independent flick, with a minuscule amount of money makes a compelling piece of art. Small town in unidentified part of America, could have been anywhere, with gloomy colorless landscape. Boring, predictable lives, unfulfilled promises, church on Sundays, unspoken words hanging in the air. Makes you want to run for your life.But where can you run? " Stephanie Daley" is an unflinching, sometimes hard to watch movie. Takes us to places we don't want to go, makes us remember things we'd like to forget. I am not sure Hollywood has a place for Hilary Brougher. People who have something to say can be nuisance. They can force us to think, and we can't have that,can we.