Aftersun (2022)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Aftersun (2022) – C. Wells

After all its great reviews (which I didn’t read), I’m not sure why I shied away from Aftersun for so long.  I guess it seemed like a heartwarming father-daughter bonding story -- and I didn’t think I needed that (but see Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, 2025, where I got that and I liked it!).  In fact, this is a Scottish father-daughter bonding story and perhaps that makes a difference. It feels more authentic than what I expected an American or Hollywood version would be like.  But more importantly, this is a mood-piece (and/or a moody piece) where we’re somewhere in the future looking back on the events, years later, viewing young dad Callum (Paul Mescal) partly through the eyes of 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and partly through adult Sophie’s eyes (but we spend only a blip of time in this present tense). Young Sophie is always watching – her dad, but also the teenagers around them at the Turkish resort town where they are holidaying. We see her observing adult things, but it isn’t quite clear how much she understands or whether she fully grasps what we as viewers can plainly see – Callum is struggling, perhaps from his divorce, perhaps for other reasons. Writer-Director Charlotte Wells (whose debut feature film this is) shows us Callum on his own, in other scenes to which Sophie is not privy, that fill in some gaps, emotional gaps, if not factual ones.  Knowing that the film is somewhat autobiographical privileges Sophie’s viewpoint and lets us understand that the director is reconstructing what she could have or should have seen, in hindsight years later.  We never know what happened next for Callum but what we do get to see, in these casual, naturalistic, real-feeling moments between father and daughter, is deeply affecting, precipitating a gentle flow of thoughts and reflections about childhood, parenthood, and how to cope in this world.  Very moving.