by Vanessa Huang
As children, we see our parents as infallible. Over time, this image is slowly chipped away and we realise the people we relied on to guide us through the world might be just as lost as we are. It’s this heartbreak that Charlotte Wells’s “emotionally autobiographical” debut, Aftersun, works with, and to remarkable effect.
The film unfolds from the perspective of Sophie (Frankie Corio), an 11-year-old girl going on holiday with her young father Calum (Paul Mescal). Twenty years later, adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) revisits these memories. Some are grainy camcorder recordings that she plays repeatedly. Other times, these memories are in a liminal space; her original memories are spliced against the strobing lights of a rave where her adult self meets her father, now both the same age. She’s piecing together these clues about her father and building a new, more nuanced image of the man that he was.
Their holiday is largely happy: the pair spend their time swimming, playing pool, and going on day trips. But these scenes are also underscored by a deeper sense of melancholy. While Sophie’s doing a fair bit of growing up on her own – she kisses a boy for the first time and hangs out with a group of older teenagers – her dad grapples with his own vanishing youth. “Can’t see myself being forty,” he remarks. “Surprised I made it to thirty.” An elusive character, his eroding self-worth is concealed behind armour, only drawn out in wistful silence and pained glances. Beyond their physical distance (Calum lives in England, while Sophie lives with her mother in Scotland), he’s a man of limited means – even Sophie isn’t oblivious to this. But he’s still trying to be the world and more for his daughter: he offers to pay for her singing lessons and a stack of books on meditation and tai chi indicate a determination to manage his depression.
Aftersun is undramatic, meandering through these passages of holiday sunshine without much happening. There’s no grand reveal; questions remain unanswered. Wells eases us into recollection that’s both fragmented and non-expository with a restraint that proves instrumental in avoiding the pitfalls of standard flashback narratives.
This is a film about reconciling our rosy childhood naïveté with a more aged wisdom, and mourning the little things we once shrugged off that would come to mean everything to us now. If only we could reach back in time and grab onto our loved ones, when at the time we unknowingly let them slip away. It’s a beautiful companion to Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman, another film exploring the gulf that exists between children and parents, even in the presence of enduring love.
The two leads shine in this nostalgic masterwork – Mescal continuing his streak of bringing a gentle sensitivity to masculinity and Corio as a young newcomer in her first acting role. Helmed by Wells with an absolutely singular vision, we’re presented with a film that’s as understated as it is brutal, and delivers just about the greatest needle-drop in recent cinematic history. Aftersun packs an emotional wallop. It’s not the kind that elicits dramatic sobbing – it’s something more deep-seated, creeping in slowly until it hits you like a shot to the heart.
