Dreamchild, the film based on a real-life incident in Alice Liddell's later life when, as Alice Hargreaves, she visited the USA for Lewis Carroll's centenary. Page 2.

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1985 - CORAL BROWN AND AMELIA SHANKLEY

A young reporter has taken the opportunity to ingratiate himself with Mrs Hargreaves, sensing both a news scoop and perhaps some profit. Mrs Hargreaves goes to bed and, unbeknownst to her, the reporter takes the naive Lucy away from the apartment and to a tea dance elsewhere in the hotel.

inding herself alone and troubled by old memories, Alice Hargreaves wanders through the hotel apartment looking for Lucy.
She enters the bedroom and is shocked to see Charles Dodgson reflected in a mirror, looking exactly the same as he did when she was a girl.
He half turns, a sad expression on his face. She looks round to where he should be standing, but the room is empty and when she looks at the mirror again, his reflection has gone.

She is drawn to the dining room and seems to be looking out into a garden with a long table set for tea and sitting there are the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse. The scene is brilliantly conceived as reality blurs with fantasy. Mrs Hargreaves is drawn into conversation with a very unpleasant Hatter and March Hare, yet she also becomes her younger self and the fictional Alice, with the dialogue never missing a beat.
Denis Potter as a writer would structure several stories running in parallel, one based in reality, the others fantastical, with the "reality" story not necessarily the one providing the ultimate resolution. "Pennies From Heaven" is perhaps his most remembered work, and his version of "Alice" has many of the same trademarks.

As Mrs Hargreaves tries to shake the visions of Wonderland, the reporter tells her he's arranged some product endorsments. Ititially sceptical, she's persuaded to take part in some personal appearances, appears in a radio programme and surprises even herself by coming to terms with the commercial possibilities of exploiting the Dodgson connection. However, the dreams recur and remind her more and more of her mortality. It becomes obvious that it was Dodgson's impossible love for her which caused her to repress his memory for all this time.

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