The parents are more affective than the girl who may or may not be their daughter.
“Reawakening” has a set-up that could make it a heartbreaking drama. A teenager leaves home, she’s been gone for a decade, her parents struggle to find her, and she comes back after all these years. But is she really their missing daughter? Or is she an imposter? That’s for the movie to know and us to find out.
Okay, okay. I’m interested in where this is going, but I’m only seeing realism in the parents than the missing girl. You feel their pain, as parents who would be in grief over their missing daughter. There’s stress, arguments, and drugs, and it’s very sad. And Jared Harris and Juliet Stevenson are both fine in their roles of John and Mary. But Erin Doherty (“The Crown,” “Adolescence”), who plays their missing daughter Clare, doesn’t really convince us that she the girl or the Anna Anderson posing as her. She seems to be going through the motions, and I’m not seeing any gumption or go in her.
The story is set in the U.K. The minute John sees Clare, he’s not convinced she’s her, but his wife says she had the same reaction. Just think. She sold her phone and laptop, so there’s no way for them to contact her. And she comes home enjoying the breakfast pastries that her mother prepared, as if everything’s okay. She left when she was 14, and she’s now 24-years-old, so of course there would be confusions about her.
When John suggests that imposter-if she is an imposter-might know what happened to the real Clare, Mary closes the argument with a stern face saying: “She’s come home whether you like it or not.” And if this is the real Clare, she agrees to allow her father to do a DNA test. I think the real Clare may be insulted or maybe she might be too stoned out of her mind to even consider it. I don’t know. I do know there are going to be answers to their questions.
I would recommend “Reawakening,” written and directed by Virginia Gilbert, for how Harris (who is also currently seen as another father in “A House of Dynamite”) and Stevenson show some real acting that almost makes me think of Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek’s characters in “In The Bedroom.” I know both these films are about different kinds of pathos, but they display strong range of emotions. In this movie, you can tell these people would be confused at situation like this, especially since their teenage daughter is now a young adult. That is if she is their daughter.
But I have to go against it, because I’m not seeing the daughter/imposter taking us into her world, and I’m not convinced the film wants to deal with the subject of drugs head on. A teenager abusing drugs is serious, and he/she needs to get the help to get clean. I remember “Four Good Days” talking about a junkie who comes home to her mother’s and wants the medication to get off the drugs forever. But that film knew what it wanted to deal with. “Reawakening” seems to be going through the motions, and ends being lagging.
The minute I started to watch this movie, I was sympathizing the parents and their turmoil. But the more I watched it, the more I realized there could be more to it.
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