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Reviews

Stephanie Daley

A morally confused problem movie

By PETER KEOUGH | May 9, 2007

2.5 Stars

VIDEO: Watch the trailer for Stephanie Daley.

Starting with the early shot of bloody footsteps in the snow, Hilary Brougher shows herself the master of the self-consciously telling detail in this earnest, opaque problem movie. Other bits include cats, deer, faucets, bandages, and rear lighting. The footsteps, though, belong to the title 16-year-old, an only child with awful parents in a God-fearing community. She slips (or maybe it’s date rape — you can put the film’s failure to make that clear down to ambiguity or addle-headedness) and gets pregnant and is alleged to have murdered her newborn in a lavatory stall in a ski lodge. Understandable, but she still has to be prosecuted. Enter a psychiatrist (the inimitable Tilda Swinton), and man, does she have issues. Not only did she just lose a baby herself, she’s pregnant again, and her husband might be two-timing her. Plus, she’s supposed to be turning over anything incriminating to the DA, so she has to be the most compromised therapist in the movies. And this film has to be one of the most morally confused.

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