Reawakening review – thought-provoking drama as missing daughter returns ten years later

Virginia Gilbert’s film sees Juliet Stevenson and Jared Harris divided on whether to believe the young woman claiming to be their child

Novelist, short story writer and film-maker Virginia Gilbert has written and directed this carefully constructed, robustly performed drama, an intimate feature which in some ways resembles a stage play or even a radio play, yet none the worse for that; it’s the kind of grown up, approachable movie designed to be talked about afterwards over dinner. Jared Harris and Juliet Stevenson play John and Mary, a married couple – he’s an electrician, she’s a primary schoolteacher – whose daughter Clare vanished 10 years previously at the age of 14. For a decade, they have lived in a twilight of suppressed despair and clenched longing, a hibernation of the soul.

On the 10th anniversary of her disappearance, the police talk John and Mary into appearing at another agonised, televised appeal for information – and then a miracle. A tremulous, frightened young woman (played by Erin Doherty) appears on their doorstep, apparently the right age and looking very much like the computer-generated images of what Clare would look like now. She says that she’s Clare and appears to know things that only Clare would know. Or does she? Mary passionately wants to believe and ignores any hint to the contrary; John goes in the opposite emotional direction and is heavy-handed in his sceptical questioning, continuing to haunt a community centre for homeless teens, asking if anyone has seen his daughter.

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