Worth: $19.00
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Cast:
Paul Mescal, Francesca Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall
Intro:
... a beautiful film that heralds the emergence of a major cinematic talent.
Charlotte Wells’ debut feature Aftersun is a beautifully melancholic tale of memory and connection.
Set in the late 1990s (1999 if the use of Blur’s ‘Tender’ is an indicator) it charts a holiday taken by Calum (Paul Mescal) and his eleven-year-old daughter, Sophie (Francesca Corio) in a budget resort in Turkey.
More than a document of the time the father and daughter spend together in a halcyon summer punctuated with looming tragedy, Aftersun is a coming-of-age story that weaves in the power of familial love with the idea that it is impossible to ever really know the people we are closest to.
The film begins with Sophie recording herself and her father. Calum will soon have a birthday and she jokes that he will be turning 103. Calum in fact is so young that people mistake Sophie for his little sister. Partially the mistake could be made because the banter between the two is affectionately good-natured and rarely belies parental authority. Sophie also exhibits a preternatural wisdom for someone of her age. She refuses to hang out with other kids at the resort because they’re “kids” and Calum refuses to hang out with their parents because they are so old.
Sophie lives with her mum in Edinburgh while Calum has moved to London to pursue job opportunities that all seem to fall through. Underlying Calum’s calm demeanour is a sense of barely repressed agony. Something is wrong; Sophie can feel it, but she can’t define it. As much as Calum tries to hide his pain from his daughter, it is evident that she’s aware of it but has no frame of reference in which to approach it with him.
Sophie wants to grow up quickly. At the resort, she is presented with a group of older teens who take her under their wing. She glimpses adult sexuality and with a boy of her own age tries out ‘tonguing’ for the first time. Where is Calum during these moments? He’s somewhere in a private hell that leads him to neglect his daughter. He apologises for disappearing and he seems genuinely sorry for so much more than accidentally leaving his daughter locked out of their room.
Although the film mainly concerns itself with Calum and Sophie’s last holiday together, it is more a tone-poem being reconstructed by an adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall). Memory fragments blend with the video camera footage and imagined scenarios, which illustrate the depth of Calum’s suffering. A great deal elides the frame with cinematographer Gregory Oke setting scenes that imply Sophie’s limited knowledge of her dad. The camera is not omniscient, and the fragmentary nature of memory and understanding is reinforced by the impressionistic methods Wells practises.
Wells’ film is essentially a two-hander, which elicits striking performances by Mescal and newcomer Corio. Irish actor Mescal has made his name by portraying relatable but flawed characters; Calum is no exception. Calum is a man who is adrift but doing all he can to stay afloat for his daughter. His blend of good and bad parenting is teased out by Wells’ script in a naturalist manner that never falls into the trap of melodrama. Presented is a man who can’t say how he broke his wrist, or how he sustained a shoulder injury, and we believe that he’s not hiding the truth from Sophie, he genuinely doesn’t know.
Corio is a revelation. Sophie is smart, funny, wry, angry, and desperately trying to hold on to her father. She spits out lines such as “Stop pretending you can pay for something you can’t afford,” with bitterness and the intent to hurt. Yet, she also relates a story about how she mistook the idea of a phone being engaged with the notion that her parents were finally engaged, “But I was really young then, like seven or something.” Like many children of separated parents, she desires a family unit but has the astuteness to realise that won’t happen.
Charlotte Wells has spoken about the film being a fiction but also extremely personal. Indeed, the level of intimacy she renders her characters with, speaks of truth. Aftersun is a beautiful film that heralds the emergence of a major cinematic talent. There are shots that will linger with the audience because their power is undeniable. Just as a Turkish carpet tells a story that its maker weaved into its very fibres, Aftersun is Wells’ ode to the immense power of storytelling; whether those stories can ever be truly understood in the fabric of one’s particular history.
