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Stephanie Daley - Must-see new women's film set in
Colorado
Stephanie Daley, a new film and multiple festival award
winner released on DVD September 4, is the sensitive
drama of 16-year-old Stephanie Daley (Amber Tamblyn,
Joan of Arcadia), who becomes pregnant and is accused of
murdering her newborn baby.
Daley denies knowing she was pregnant and is placed in
psychiatric counseling with Lydie Crane (Tilda Swinton,
The Chronicles of Narnia) who is herself pregnant and
has issues of her own to come to terms with including
her husband Paul (award-winning actor Timothy Hutton).
The main question here is do we believe Daley? It is
easy to overlook the naivety of youth as we factor in
the community at-large, parental influences, religious
beliefs, and fear of persecution. Still . . . we wonder,
did she do it?
The portrayal of the teenaged culture is perhaps the
best aspect of this film, giving everyone a reminder of
those confusing and trying times. Sending a clear
message, the script may be a tad toned down in places
(though it carries an R rating) but that is a good thing
because it is a message that every teen and parent
should hear and one should not have to be able to
interpret Thoreau in order to garner it’s message.
Although if you want to dig deeper, it’s there. A
Thoreau quote, “I went to the woods to live deliberately
. . .,” on the high school English professor’s
blackboard may have been a connection to a nightmarish
dream Crane had of remaining in the woods alone to have
her baby. Daley winds up having her baby alone in a
primitive manner, while we later learn that Crane on an
emotional whim, emptied the ashes of her own previously
stillborn child into the woods from the window of a
moving vehicle. Crane may have felt the unconscious
dream-need to return to the woods for birth to exonerate
herself from her action, thereby giving the film more
than just surface value.
Regardless of how it’s interpreted, it is ultimately the
story of two women: one having a baby at the earliest
point in life and one having a baby at the latest point
in life and the relationship that bonds between them
allowing each to face the necessary truths in their
lives. And as my own 16-year-old daughter said, “It was
the ending that got me.”
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Order the movie today!
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