Good character study, but you must understand one thing ...

A few viewers got confused at the very beginning of this movie and doing so cannot allow a viewer to appreciate what is going on. The older Alice we first see and the younger Alice we see are short time later are the same character at two different ages.

It should not be a spoiler to say the story switches back and forth between the same character, Alice, when she was a 14 yr-old school girl and when she was near 30 working for a publishing company. Something happens to her when she was young that influenced how we see her acting as an adult. This will seem obvious to the vast majority of us but occasionally we hear of someone paying scant attention and watching the whole movie not realizing that, by doing so miss the whole point of the story. And go away thoroughly confused!

The movie virtually beats you over the head with that fact at 5 minutes into the movie, a co-worker saying "Alice?" then it switches to the father introducing his young daughter Alice. If that didn't do it for anyone then at 8 minutes the same father is having lunch with grown Alice. Some must think that the same father has two daughters named Alice several years apart in age? (Forehead slap...)

I suppose for some they needed it in big bold letters across the screen at the 5-minute transition:

THIS IS THE SAME ALICE, FLASHBACK AS A 14-YR-OLD.

..*.. TxMike ..*..
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes not.