Elizabeth is Missing (UK 2019)

I came across this film in a search for recent titles starring Glenda Jackson who died nearly a year ago. I’m surprised that I missed it in December 2019 and when I looked up the film on the Internet Movie Database I noted that it scored highly with database ‘users’ but that there were just three professional reviews. What’s going on? The answer is that it is listed as a ‘TV movie’ and there is a convention in the media coverage of films that somehow films made for television are inferior. I think this is an American view that has somehow taken hold in the UK as well. Such films tend to receive more attention in some other European countries. Having said that, the UK television ecology has not really seen many ‘TV films’ since the BBC and Channel 4 stopped making them consistently in the 1990s (?). By this I mean the current trend is for ‘long-form’ drama productions over several episodes. Single narratives like this 87 minute film are less common.

Glenda Jackson retired from her role as an MP in the UK parliament in 2015 and returned first to the stage. This 2019 title was her first appearance in a film since 1992 and her last few appearances before she was elected as an MP had all been in television productions. This later film, however, was directed by an accomplished filmmaker whose own career has been divided between TV and cinema productions. Aisling Walsh is an Irish director who trained at the National Film School in the UK and she was responsible for a cinema feature that I rate very highly, Maudie (Ireland-Canada 2016). I expected that she would elicit a powerful performance from Glenda Jackson.

Elizabeth is Missing is an adaptation by Andrea Gibb of a 2014 novel by Emma Healey. The novel, Healey’s début, was an international bestseller and winner of several prizes. It’s puzzling that the adaptation did not get a cinema release. The film was made by the production arm of the Scottish TV broadcaster STV for BBC1. The narrative is set in an unnamed town and was filmed in Scotland, mainly in Paisley. The central location, a  suburban housing estate, could be anywhere and other Paisley locations are used to invoke flashbacks to the late 1940s. We first meet the central character Maud (Glenda Jackson) in her own house and the various notes stuck on doors around her kitchen, as well as the note on the front door warning her to lock the door, indicate that she is suffering from memory loss. Later we will realise that she has a form of Alzheimer’s though whether or not she has had an official diagnosis is initially not clear. Maud goes out to visit her friend Elizabeth (Maggie Steed) and the two women work in Elizabeth’s garden until they are spooked by a neighbour’s dog barking. Later, as Maud walks through the local park she hallucinates a meeting between herself as a teenager (played by Liv Hill) and her older sister Sukey (Sophie Rundle). A few days later, Maud waits outside a Salvation Army charity shop, as arranged, to meet Elizabeth but her friend doesn’t show up. This marks Elizabeth’s ‘disappearance’ as far as Maud is concerned and she will start to visit Elizabeth’s house to try to work out what has happened to her. From this point on, Maud will become wrapped up in two quests – what has happened to Elizabeth and what happened to Sukey in 1949 when she too ‘disappeared’.

Unlike Elizabeth, whose son visits only occasionally, Maud has daily contact with at least one of her daughter Helen (Helen Behan), her grand-daughter Katy (Nell Williams) or a nurse/carer. She also has a son in Germany who visits occasionally, sometimes in the flesh and sometimes via Skype or similar. As the narrative progresses, we realise that the nurse/carer is professional, Helen feels ultimately responsible for her mother but Katy is perhaps the most sympathetic. Gradually we learn about Maud’s life as a teenager, her Sister Sukey and her often absent brother-in-law Frank. There is also a lodger in the 1949 house, Douglas. Dementia comes in many forms and all sufferers experience the disease in different ways. Maud’s experiences are not that unusual as far as I am aware. The people she meets are often either sympathetic or dismissive but few can really understand what she experiences. It’s worth pointing out that this is a film conceived and realised mostly by a team of women. The relatively few male characters are mainly peripheral and the clues to aspects of Maud’s past mainly involve ‘women’s things’ – a powder compact, jewellery, lipstick, hair slide, dresses etc. The cinematography by Lukas Strebel (who may have worked with director Walsh on the TV series Wallander) is not particularly expressive but does a good job for television, which sometimes aims for a conventional presentation. Inevitably, much depends on Glenda Jackson. This is one of her standout performances. She looks gaunt and if anything older than her 83 years at the time of shooting. She was never one to hide herself behind more flattering make-up and in the very early scenes the photography makes clear what her current situation is through brutal close-ups and slight distortions from shooting through various transparent objects.

Elizabeth is Missing is a difficult watch at times but it is always compelling because of the strong performances led by Ms Jackson. I won’t spoil the narrative resolution, only to suggest that we do learn what happened to Elizabeth and there is a resolution to Maud’s search for Sukey as well. I enjoyed watching the film but it would have been good to see it on a cinema screen. We have lost a major actor in Glenda Jackson and I hope that Aisling Walsh is able to film some more equally interesting stories about women. She appears to have two more in pre-production as of 2024. These projects don’t always work out but I’ll be looking for them. I watched Elizabeth is Missing on a rented DVD but I now find it is on iPlayer for the next 30 days. In the US it was on Masterpiece Theatre on PBS, I think. It has also been shown on TV in several other territories. Do watch it if you get the chance. There are not enough films about older women but there are plenty of older actors who could play them if given a chance.