Aftersun

I am only writing this review so I can remember later on why I only gave this movie a 6. I understand that this movie has an extremely powerful and intimate presentation of the relationship between a reckless father and his young daughter. I noticed the intricacies and nuance that the film makers tried to convey throughout. I just did not connect with the film at all. I imagine that this film hit some people hard but for me I was quite bored with it by the end. I have to simply be true to my own feelings and opinions from a film and conclude that to me, it is simply ok. Don't take my rating too seriously because I can genuinely imagine somebody else watching this film thinking that it is the best thing they ever saw.

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.

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 .

After watching this beautiful film and coming across a little note from the amazing storyteller Charlotte Wells:

(I cannot share URL apparently so please search "A note from Charlotte Wells from the site of A24.")

This was the word that broke me down. Hasret.

I just couldn't resist my tears. As a Turkish person, its just both amazing and heartbreaking from the point of view of the director that this word resonates with her feelings from a place she had this holiday with her late father. That it stuck with her...

Even though it is not the same case at all, I remember the times as a kid I closed the door on my dad because he would come home late from work. That because he would promise me to come home early.

Now, today I can't even imagine how saddening it was for him at those times and it wasn't even at his hands.

Hopefully I will be able to share my love and gratitude my parents as Charlotte did here with such elegance through some way. Since, it's not easy to recapture feeling this instant or in any...

Thank you for this film all in all, it surely made me reconsider a lot recently...

I almost never watch films twice but 'Aftersun' was a rare case where I absolutely had to. I don't think this film can be fully appreciated on first watch. I saw someone suggest that after you watch it your mind will go back to little moments and re-evaluate their significance, and it will. But watching it again with the full picture gives the entire movie a different perspective. The second watch is almost like watching a different film.

Kids in films, particularly in lead roles, can often be very annoying. That isn't an issue here. Frankie Corio gives one of the most likeable child performances I can ever remember seeing. Her chemistry with Paul Mescal was amazing. I read that she wasn't privy to Mescal's solo scene rehearsals, so that she wasn't fully aware of what his character was going through, much the same as her character Sophie wasn't. That's brilliant.

Something that was very apparent on second viewing was the significance of the music in the movie. The first time through I remember thinking, "there are a lot of good songs in this movie". On second viewing you realise that every song used is telling a story. It's telling you what is going on, but like most people in the real world, we just hear a banging song and nod our head to it. Then later on we reconsider its true meaning.

Finally, this film has one of the beast movie endings I can remember seeing. It's classy, heavy and thoughtful all at once. It's done in a beautiful and somewhat haunting way that will stick with me for a long time. 9.5/10.