Dreamchild 2020

The film follows the journey of an elderly widow, Alice Hargreaves, and her carer Lucy as they disembark from a voyage, only to be met by a swarm of journalists eager for a quote about her connection with Charles Dodgson, whom she knew as “Mr. Dodgson.” A former reporter, Jack Dolan, steps in to steady the scene, quickly befriending Alice and Lucy and easing their path through the relentless press. Dolan soon becomes their advocate, helping to surface endorsement opportunities, while a tender romance begins to bloom between Jack and Lucy.

Back at their hotel room, Alice is swept into vivid visions of Dodgson, along with the fantastical guests of Wonderland—the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Caterpillar, the Dormouse, the Mock Turtle, and the Gryphon. They join a tea party that playfully mocks her aging and forgetfulness. She also recalls the lazy boating party of July 4, 1862, when Dodgson, then a mathematics professor at her father’s college, tried to entertain her and her sisters by spinning a fanciful tale that would later grow into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Through a series of flashbacks, the film intimates that Dodgson may have been deeply infatuated with Alice, and that their relationship could have carried sexual undertones. Alice reconsiders the boating party from this new angle, recognizing Dodgson’s jealousy when she meets the man she would one day marry, and acknowledging that she enjoyed teasing him to provoke his nervous stutter. As she wrestles with these memories, she strives to understand the meaning of their past and the complex dynamics at play.

As Alice delivers her acceptance speech at Columbia University, she reaches a sense of resolution about Dodgson and the tangled history between them. In a final fantasy sequence with the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, she and Dodgson find forgiveness and peace, suggesting a reconciliation between memory and myth and the private past that haunts the public figure she has become.