Aftersun [2022]
“Don't you ever feel like... you've just done a whole amazing day and then you come home and feel tired and down and... it feels like your organs don't work? They're just tired, and everything is tired. Like you're sinking.”
From first-time writer/director, Charlotte Wells, comes 2022’s quiet, melodic, and devastating companion piece to the chaos of Everything Everywhere All at Once: Aftersun. It is not often that media transcends its form and works to establish entirely new methods of communication within known mechanisms, but that is exactly what Wells has done here. Aftersun won’t be a film everyone loves, but it is one that everyone should see. Similar to something else I’ll be reviewing soon, this is one of the very rare pieces of entertainment that I would call “important” and, especially coming as a debut film, that is an impressive feat.
In Aftersun we follow Calum and his daughter, Sophie, through a placid vacation to Turkey. Throughout, we get strange visions of another time and place that are connected to this, but in a way we don’t understand. We see Calum gently parent his daughter as she meets new friends, questions him at sharing “I love you too” with her mother despite their legal separation, and as he struggles with something neither of them can quite define. The film is soft, it is intentional, and it is absolutely crushing. I wouldn’t describe the journey as “tragic” per se, as that implies some sort of escalating drama. Instead, what we get is a frighteningly intimate look into the difference between the person we see and the person we don’t; and how that hidden person shapes the world around them and their path through it.
Both Paul Mescal [Calum] and Frankie Corio [Sophie] play off each other so well that you’d truly believe she was his daughter if you didn’t know better. The bond they share onscreen sells the intimacy of the film and engrosses you in both of their quiet, yet complicated worlds. Aftersun is a beautifully messy journey through the intricacies of human experience and the horrid strength of hindsight. Because of the intentional and level pacing of this film, I think that it won’t reach a massive audience, and that’s truly a loss.
What Charlotte Wells has created here is a piece whose messages will transcend time and need to be seen, heard, and felt by anyone who’s ever known anyone else.
There’s a darkness at the heart of the touching and deeply genuine love between Calum and Sophie, and that darkness is the hidden pilot of the film’s events. It’s a force that many are familiar with whether they have a name for it or not; a malignant, gnawing beast that scratches and bites and whispers and laughs from deep inside forgotten corners and never allows those it torments a moment of peace. Or, if it does let them be, it’s only to remind them of what it can take.
To call Aftersun “genius” is to rob it of the subtle intelligence and empathy that Wells has baked into every frame, and to tame its feathered, shadowy edges into something more definable and quotidian.
I would most closely relate this to 2021’s Nine Days or 2017’s A Ghost Story, but only in a very broad sense. It’s a little abstract, but only if you aren’t tuned entirely in. It’s a little slow, but only if you aren’t willing to let yourself be hurt by its truths. This is a film best viewed alone and in a space where you won’t be disturbed during or for some time after. It's a journey from which you should just sit and let the credits roll, let yourself absorb your feelings, and then share it with someone else to do the same. There’s a lot to unpack here and, like much of what we have to unpack within ourselves, it’s best done at its own pace, in its own time.
“You can live whatever you want to live. Be whoever you want to be. You have time.”
