Stephanie Daley

2006

Action / Drama

3
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 59% · 50 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 59% · 25K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.2/10 10 1989 2K

pregnant minor unwillingly pregnant murder woman director

Plot summary

Stephanie collapses in a pool of blood while on a school skiing trip. A doctor discovers that the blood is the after-effects of giving birth. Soon afterward, the body of a newborn baby is found in a toilet, its mouth blocked with toilet paper. Despite Stephanie's insistence that her child was stillborn and that she had no idea that she was pregnant, she is arrested for the murder of the child.

Director

Hilary Brougher Photo
Hilary Brougher

Top cast

Trisha LaFache Photo
Trisha LaFache as Karen
Tilda Swinton Photo
Tilda Swinton as Lydie Crane
Neal Huff Photo
Neal Huff as Mr. Thomas
Deirdre O'Connell Photo
Deirdre O'Connell as Jane
720p.WEB
845.67 MB
1280*712
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 32 min
Seeds 6

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by robert-temple 7 / 10

The enigmas of unwanted pregnancies, concealment, and hidden emotions

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.
Reviewed by Buddy-51 7 / 10

intriguing human drama

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.
Reviewed by natashabowiepinky 7 / 10

Not very jolly...

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