John and Mary have lived with desolating grief and the agony of uncertainty for the past ten years. Their only child, Clare, ran away from home when she was fourteen and no trace of her whereabouts has ever been found. When Clare returns, now a young woman of twenty-four, Mary is overjoyed. But John comes to believe that Clare is not who she claims to be. As old tensions resurface, a gripping search for the truth unfolds.
This had the makings of quite compelling drama dealing with loss, grief and longing but somehow the practical elements of the story as it played out didn't work for me. "John" (Jared Harris) and wife "Mary" (Juliet Stevenson) and happily enough married but it soon becomes clear that their daughter "Clare" got caught up with a bad-influence boyfriend and ran away from home some the years ago. The police suggest a revitalised campaign to support the impending anniversary of her disappearance and next thing there's a girl in their kitchen (Erin Doherty) armed with plenty of quite intimate knowledge of this couple and asserting that she's the long lost "Clare". "Mary" oozes a sort of maternal desperation to believe and welcomes her pretty unconditionally. "John", on the other hand, is much more sceptical and as the story unfolds this puts quite a strain on their relationship. Now the father does insist on some sort of DNA test, but not realistically - for my money - emphatically enough. He has significant doubts yet the plot allows her to take advantage of the vulnerable mother without his much more robust interventions to prove one way or the other. I know such scenarios can never black and white, but given the police are continuing to investigate - and coming up with leads that could prove/disprove the identity of their new child, I felt the story took just a little too contrived a direction and at times might be considered a bit cruel. Auteur Virgina Gilbert has dialled down the hysteria nicely and for such an emotive subject, she guides these two characters without too much histrionics and tantrums, but I just felt the thrust of the second half of the thing a touch too implausible from a man who must have loved and felt responsible for his wife as much as for a girl he hadn't seen in a decade. Stevenson is good in these down-to-earth roles, gels quite well with Harris and the film is worth a gander, but it's a bit unrealistic.