Review of Stephanie Daley (2007) by Karen F — 04 Nov 2007

CONFUSING AND DISEMPOWERING MESSAGE --.

Superb acting and unusually realistic portrayals of high school life don't save this movie from its slow pace, artificially contrived premise, and unresolved ambiguities that leave the viewer dangling.

Tilda Swanton plays Lydie Crane, a pregnant forensic psychologist who is still reeling from a stillborn birth just months earlier. Amber Tamblyn, the star of TV's quirky "Joan of Arcadia," plays Stephanie Daley, a confused Christian girl who has somehow lost an accidental pregnancy. Did she murder the premature fetus, or was it born dead? The prosecutor hires Crane to find out.

As a forensic psychologist, I was looking forward to seeing this movie. Instead, I found it hopelessly confused and confusing. The distinctions between the legal concepts of competency (the current ability to comphrehend one's situation and stand trial) and sanity (a past mental state pertaining to the time of an offense) are muddied. Far more troublingly, filmmaker Hilary Braugher confuses moral and legal guilt. One is not legally guilty of killing a baby for merely wishing it dead! And most troubling of all, Crane foists her own ambivalent psychological state onto this confused teenage girl, essentially using her empathetic interviewing skills to collude in the girl's exploitation. In real life (which I realize doesn't have much connection to the movies) Crane's violations of her professional role boundaries would be unethical; Crane probably should have declined a case with so many troubling parallels to her own circumstances.

The movie tackles complex issues about religion, fate versus choice, and women's fear of giving birth. And it has a superficial allure of feminism in its focus on the female experience. But in the end, its message is far from empowering. Should a teen girl really [SPOILER ALERT - DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE AND WANT TO MAINTAIN THE SUSPENSE] go to prison for five years for mere bad thoughts? I breathed a sigh of relief that there aren't too many real-life Lydie Cranes running around to assist such judicial railroads. Also, that I'd seen my last dead deer for awhile.