Aftersun
Tender is the ghost in Charlotte Wells’ hauntingly beautiful feature debut Aftersun, a remarkable illustration of nostalgia and loss that sprang from a flick through family photo albums and a fondly remembered father-daughter trip to Turkey. Personal, universal and deeply emotional, this is a film that demands from its audience the ability to reflect and connect on a level that we’re comfortable not fully understanding. Like memory itself, the images in Aftersun may not comprise an entirely accurate rendering of the events within, and Wells trusts us to do with that what we will. There’s a first time for everything - directing, acting, bursting into tears once escaping the cinema - and this assured portrait of blurry recollections proves that masters can reveal themselves right out of film school.
It’s the late 90s when we join 30-year-old Calum (Paul Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) as they play pool and laze around one on a low-key summer holiday in Turkey. Scaffolding and construction surround their resort as Calum apologises to Sophie about their presence - “we’ll go somewhere else next time,” he promises. Calum and Sophie’s mum are no longer together but communicate over the phone with civility and even affection, signing off the calls (much to Sophie’s confusion) with “I love you.” She records herself and her father on a mini-DV camera, turning it occasionally to the teens gathering (and embracing) in the communal areas of the resort. Events not captured on Sophie’s camera are often brightly lit and shrouded in a comforting haze, while others outside her periphery are mysteriously dark and at odds with how a child sees the world. As daughter edges closer to adolescence with curious excitement, father fades into the darkness of mental illness, his uncertainty of his place in the world outside of fatherhood evident through visual clues scattered throughout the film.
These memories are interrupted as we cut to the Sophie of now, a partner and new mother who barely resembles the carefree tween we’ve come to know. Adult Sophie is 31-years-old; the same age Calum turns in the film and one year past a milestone he never expected he’d reach. It’s clear from the change in tone and colour grading that this holiday, in which the pair display a relationship built on closeness and genuine openness, was the last trip Sophie ever had with her dad. Waking to the sound of her baby crying, Sophie gets up and takes her turn in parenting duties before settling on the couch and revisiting old videos captured during the holiday. Without a word of dialogue or anything so obvious as a tear, we immediately feel Sophie’s difficulty in reconciling her 20-year-old memories of her father with the man now absent from the picture.
There’s a similar sense of mystery to this film as Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir (and its wonderful sequel) in the way its heroine attempts to make sense of her memories of an ended relationship. Premiering at Cannes in 2022, Aftersun was met with immediate critical acclaim and a hype that made me nervous, as one who lives in a place that gets many films six months too late. Where the highest reverence often goes to intellectually loud cinema, this film’s commendations are a result of something quite different (and subtly more accessible to its audience of anyone who ever had a parent). In a note to A24’s viewership, Wells mentions the Turkish word hasret, meaning “some combination of longing, love, and loss.” That Aftersun, without spectacle or spelling out, so totally achieves this translation is a life affirming example of what cinema can do when the right people are given the necessary freedom and faith in their abilities.
Garnering the only Oscar nomination from the bunch is Paul Mescal, whose performance transcends the recognition of a statue. Conveying Calum’s deep insecurities comes as natural to Mescal as his obvious affection for his daughter, their relationship seeming so real that it’s easy to forget we’re watching a film. Wells allowed her leads two weeks’ rehearsal to establish their chemistry, a choice that pays off in spades. Frankie Corio was plucked from obscurity to inhabit the keen-to-grow-up Sophie and proves herself the perfect screen partner, fitting into her role with an ease one might expect from a seasoned child star. Their exchanges are so beautifully constructed that I almost felt as though I was intruding on an intimacy reserved only for the blood related. The reciprocal face tracing as Sophie falls asleep or as she wipes the day off her father’s face; the interview about childhood expectations that touches a nerve for Calum; the suggestion that he get Sophie singing lessons after refusing to join her in karaoke and her retort about offering to pay for things he can’t afford; it’s rare enough to see parent/child moments like these even make it to screen, let alone be brought to life with such sincerity.
The film is presented through a child’s-eye lens as Calum’s more confounding moments are intentionally kept at arm’s length. Skillfully mixing the video footage, reconstructed memories and moments that don’t fit either is cinematographer Gregory Oke in only his second full feature credit. Through inventive framing, images are refracted in ways that suggest that these memories, as the human brain tends to make them, are scrambled concoctions of fact and stagnant impressions. His confidence in capturing the beauty in darkness enhances the mystery of the narrative, particularly when combined with Oliver Coates’ emotionally layered score. The film’s clever use of music sets the era but also plays with key and tempo in a way that turns upbeat hits into nightmarish accompaniments to the unmistakable fear of losing someone in a crowd. Never is this more effective than the film’s final sequence, which hints at the truth fancifully hidden in Sophie’s childhood memories.
As a child of divorce (who frequently espouses its character and resilience building), Aftersun transported me back to my own youth of carefree activity and complete ignorance of who my parents were as individuals post-split. Navigating new solo parent territory must’ve been daunting for both but particularly the old man, who himself seemed quite young in photos since revisited. When my sister and I were little, we focused on the adventure of going to Dad’s on the weekend (the only times we were allowed to drink Coke and watch The Simpsons); it occurs to me that we never concerned ourselves with our parents’ emotional or financial states, only learning more when we were of age to be let in on such things. For Sophie, the only answers discoverable to her require sifting through memories and camcorder footage, and there’s something hopelessly upsetting about that.
It’s not unusual for me to weep quite easily in films (or even musical cues) but what Aftersun did to me was far more profound than I suspect I’ll ever uncover. When the cinema reilluminated and the credits rolled silently and audience members began muttering their praises, I found myself frozen in some sort of vibratory state that felt almost unfamiliar. In fact, I had experienced it before: at the age of 7, upon being told that Dad wouldn’t be living with us anymore. We made haste to get out into the fresh air, whereupon I thanked the gods (at Bailey Nelson) for the opacity of my sunglasses. I can’t thank Charlotte Wells enough for what she’s done with this extraordinary film, but I look forward to the next with the full knowledge that it might also hurt.
Verdict: ☆☆☆☆☆
Aftersun is in cinemas February 23.
