"A Stolen Life" (a.k.a., "Deadly Lessons") is a film about three women. Beth Williams is married to a controlling attorney husband, and she is fiercely protective of her daughter. Aubrey Williams is the daughter struggling in school and in her personal life due to her situation at home. Tamara Thompson is the kind tutor, who bonds with Aubrey and gives her a new lease on life.
The filmmakers did a superb job in maintaining dramatic tension while weaving the details of the past into the moment-to-moment realities of the present. Thirteen years ago, Tamara (a.k.a., Christina Miller) witnessed her child being kidnapped right from under her eyes in a carriage while out for a stroll in broad daylight in Los Angeles. Thirteen years later, the quick-thinking teacher and friend of Tamara, Mrs. Brent, notices a remarkable resemblance between young Aubrey and the teenage Tamara, when she was growing up with the woman known as Christina Miller.
The wild card in the film is the strange figure of Richard Miller. Is he expressing only "tough love" for his daughter? Or, is he a monster who may have been the abductor of the child thirteen years ago? That is the dilemma that is front and center in the minds of the audience. It is also the dilemma of the two women who believe they may be the mother of Aubrey Williams.
There was an especially thoughtful dénouement to the film in which all three women return to original crime scene. The performances were outstanding, and there was a beautiful comaraderie of the three women as they meet at the lake around the shared experience of the love between a mother and daughter.