Stephanie Daley

Sundance had something to do with this small film. Like a lot of such indies, it didn’t get any distribution. It made a total of $25,073. (Yes, thousand, that’s not a misprint!), and never played on more than 3 screens, most of which were probably film festivals. No indication of what it cost, but a party scene was shot in the location manager’s basement, so it couldn’t have been much. Don’t you just love these IMDb details? A film like this basically only lives on DVD.

There’s not much story. A young girl (Amber Tamblyn), who gave birth in a bathroom during a ski trip, is being examined by a psychologist (Tilda Swinton) with the hope of determining if she killed her baby or not. The girl claims she didn’t know she was pregnant. (I know this is possible, as I know a woman who was very far along before she realized she had one in the oven, but this person was quite a bit larger than Stephanie.) Swinton had recently given birth to a stillborn, and is now pregnant again, which is the main source of the tension here. The movie is not a whodunit. I wasn’t surprised when there was no real resolution, no absolute truth revealed. This is an actor’s movie, and both women are quite good (Amber is Russ Tamblyn’s daughter), but I guess I like a little more plot.