Aftersun

I have two daughters and recently got divorced. I know how it hurts to put on a fake smile while deep inside your heart is bleeding. As a father, a man, you try to look strong and resilient, to keep your children worry-free, but every time the girls are not around you feel like an empty shell. This movie made me cry because I know how it feels to be Callum. I know how hard it is to leave your precious children behind and to be torn away from your family. Leaving behind beautiful memories and slowly drifting apart from your loved ones. It's very hard to move on and I hope to experience better days in the future.

This film crept up on me. I was worried it was a gimmicky art film (plus at the beginning the dialogue was hard to decipher) but as the film went on I was swept up in it - purely down to Paul Mescal's and Francesca Corio's performances. Achingly beautiful. I was crying without realising and also on the tube home - the tears just kept coming but it was nothing to do with me.

Alison Willmore from Vulture at New York Magazine perfectly articulated what I felt :' It's about wanting to reach across time, and to meet a loved one in an impossible space where, for once, you're both on the same level, and you can finally understand them for who they are - or who they were.'

A moving film about a girl reminiscing on a holiday to Turkey taken with her estranged father 20 years prior. The use of music is terrific, the two central performances are very touchingly delivered (Paul Mescal and the young Frankie Corio). It is one of the films of 2022. The fact this is Charlotte Wells' debut feature is nothing more than astonishing. She delivers massive assurance and confidence in direction, which pushes the narrative forward very tenderly as the girl (Sophie) tries to reconcile her relationship with her father Callum in two separate timelines.

Along the way we are given snippets of her father's troubles. Wells' very cleverly weaves in a subtext that works to a crescendo in the last 10 minutes which includes one of the most brilliant transition shots in recent cinema (not hyperbole, it really is brilliant). The viewer is invited to join the dots on what has happened between the two timelines and there are several clues that help.

Wells' debut has a familiarity with the work of fellow Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, and in particular her film 'Morvern Callar'. This feels lie the birth of another great director.

The one thing you can say about the film Aftersun is that it's not afraid of subtlety. It's human realism at its core dealing with themes such as childhood, fatherhood, responsibility, class, and vulnerability. It's the opposite of dramatic yet it keeps you engaged and glued to the screen through out as you care about the characters despite the simplicity of their day to day interactions. Paul Mescal plays Callum, a young father to an 11 year-old somewhat precocious girl named Sophie. The film in my opinion is about a father who tries his best to maintain a rock like mask to convey strength and stability for his daughter while being emotionally vulnerable underneath. Occasionally throughout the film that mask slips a little bit as Callum struggles to bear the responsibility of being a dad at such a young age and while facing his own personal troubles. At the same time his daughter, getting older and wiser, starts to explore the world of adolescence while on holiday where she also begins to notice her father's vulnerabilities. It's a sensitive film and one that leaves you enthralled and attached to the characters on a deeply human level even if that dramatic colonel doesn't pop the way you might except.

I'm always happy when I see debut feature's from new filmmakers, Charlotte Wells is the newest addition to that list. After Lynne Ramsay and Ruth Paxton, here we have another brilliant Scottish Filmmaker with her feature debut "Aftersun" produced by Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski. The story revolves around Sophie and her father Calum, a divorcee who must care for his minor daughter while coping with loneliness and mental health.

The film opens with a handy cam footage of Calum where at first glance seems almost happy, until he is posed to answer a question by Sophie. The frame is paused, followed by glitches from the footage as we follow in flashback. Eleven-year-old Sophie vacationing with her dad. It is full of light, happy moments they shared between each other but it always fades into bitterness till the last goodbye.

Don't think this is is yet another traumatic arthouse film with ambiguous narrative that drags out and goes nowhere. I promise you that this plot is smart, will immerse you avidly, sometimes choking on what is happening on the screen. Because it is very difficult to resist drawing parallels with real life. Some might feel this is a personal story or the life story of your friends is woven into the film.

Firstly, the issues raised in the film like the coming-of-age, loneliness are not blown out of proportion or doesn't scream too loud. Even with the chic and sophisticated staging, filters the father-daughter relationship doesn't fall into the stereotypes. The bond between both is shot so beautifully unlike Hollywood directors who strongly exaggerate. On the one hand, i love how the director uses the location to reveal the characters, exposing the emptiness and with famous musical accompanies as background score.

Secondly, kudos for Charlotte Wells as she cleverly registers emotions though it is never explained in dialogues. In fact, very little is explained in this atmospheric film. I loved the staging of a particular scene, Sophie takes a small glance through the keyhole as she watches girl "hand job" gesture while she brags about it with her friends. So many things would have gone wrong here but i appreciate Wells for drawing a line and keeping things delicate throughout the runtime.

Coming to the performances, Paul Mescal is capable of transmitting tenacity and great fragility in the same shot as he stares into the abyss and the internal conflicts that lie dormant deep within him (the dance scene). He gives his best to hold the viewer in an atmosphere of melancholy and empathy. There are times when he does his best as a Father and especially the bare back shot of him sobbing is brilliant without excessive melodrama as the scene cuts to a letter he had written to Sophie.

Frankie Corio is magnificent in her first acting debut as a 11-year-old, it seems like this was the role she was destined to play, a tailored made character. She is not too matured, whimsical or cute with dramatic intensity but does strike a balance with emotions and inhabits the typical 11- year-old mentality with lot of curiosity (liked how director used the Hookah pot instead of dumb question to register innocence). She hangs out with Michael, they don't introduce in the first meeting, it happens the second time. For me this ranks in the list of my favourite Child performances along with Stanislaw Rózewicz's Birth Certificate (1961), Shinji Sômai's Moving (1993), Dorota Kedzierzawska's Crows (1994), Patricio Kaulen's A Long Journey (1967), Kjell Grede's Hugo and Josephine (1967), Amir Naderi's The Runner (1984), Mariana Rondón's Bad Hair (2013), Yared Zeleke's Lamb (2015), Achero Mañas's El Bola (2000), Tony Gatlif's Mondo (1995), Nabil Ayouch's Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets (2000), Héctor Babenco's Pixote (1980), Viktoras Starosas I Love the Headmistress (1978), Xhanfise Keko's Tomka and His Friends (1977), Maciej Dejczer's 300 Miles to Heaven (1989), Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher (1999), Byambasuren Davaa's The Cave of the Yellow Dog (2005), David Zellner's Kid-Thing (2012), Terence Davies's The Long Day Closes (1992), Samira Makhmalbaf's The Apple (1998), So Yong Kim's Treeless Mountain (2008), Céline Sciamma's Tomboy (2011), Andrés Wood's Machuca (2004), Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl (2001), Jacques Doillon's Ponette (1996), Akihiko Shiota Canary (2004), Manoel de Oliveira's Aniki-Bóbó (1942), Andrey Zvyagintsev's The Return (2003), Ken Loach's Kes (1969), Shane Meadows's This Is England (2006), Karel Kachyna's The High Wall (1964), Vittorio De Sica's The Children Are Watching Us (1944), Wojciech Marczewski's Weiser (2001), Jan Sverák's Kolya (1996), Petar Lalovic's Some Birds Can't Fly (1997), Pavel Chukhray The Thief (1997), Soo-il Jeon's With a Girl of Black Soil (2007), Louis Malle's Zazie dans le Metro (1960), Claude Jutra's Mon oncle Antoine (1971), François Truffaut's 400 Blows (1959), Lasse Hallström's My Life as a Dog (1985), Cary Joji Fukunaga's Beasts of No Nation (2015), ), Yoon Ga-eun's The World Of Us (2016), Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander (1982), Lev Golub's Devochka ishchet otsa/Girl Seeks Father (1959), Yuan Zhang's Little Red Flowers (2006) Sean Baker's The Florida Project (2017), Edward Yang's Yi Yi (2000) and Carlos Saura's Cria Cuervos (1976).

Closing, i will not recommend this to everyone as some will find it boring. To those who love slow burn drama, be prepared to sail along to the Sunny side of Turkey as Wells paints a portrait of life, Mental illness and Fatherhood, to say the least, centered on a arthouse narrative. I guarantee that this film's sensitivity and making will strike you at heart with the symmetry of its two protagonists alone .