Reawakening (15) |Close-Up Film Review
Cast: Jared Harris, Juliet Stephenson, Erin Docherty
Review by Carol Allen
Since then they have been sort of running on empty. Still appearing to function – he’s an electrician, she’s a primary school teacher – but with a huge hole in their lives which they can’t deal with. John hopefully scans the faces of twenty something women in the street, hoping for a flicker of recognition, Mary locks herself in her room, talking to the daughter she may never see again.
The police decide to re-open the case and John and Mary are persuaded to appear in a television appeal, flanked by photographs of Clare aged 14 and a computer generated image of Clare as she might well appear now. Shortly afterwards a nervous young woman (Erin Docherty) appears, claiming to be Clare returned home. She looks remarkably like that computer picture and she knows things that Clare would know, including her history of drug abuse but is she really their long lost daughter?
Mary accepts her and welcomes her joyfully, John is sceptical and thinks she is an imposter. Mary dissuades him from telling the police, wanting to give the woman she believes to be her daughter time to adjust. But does she really believe this is her daughter, or does she just want to believe? Is John’s scepticism justified or is he rejecting his own child?
It’s a low key, very human story which concentrates largely on the couple, particularly John. Lots of close ups of their faces, getting us to identify with them. Both characters in their different ways are very moving. Docherty as Clare remains rather distant, a mystery to us as well as the parents, until her story is finally revealed in an interestingly shot scene, where the camera stays totally on John’s reaction rather than showing us Clare telling her story.
There are a few other characters in the film but this is basically an intimate three handed human story, beautifully acted.
