REVIEW: Aftersun [2022]

Rating: R | Runtime: 102 minutes
Release Date: October 21st, 2022 (USA) / November 18th, 2022 (UK)
Studio: A24
Director(s): Charlotte Wells
Writer(s): Charlotte Wells

You can live whatever you want to live. Be whoever you want to be. You have time.

The film starts with the broken pixels of a home movie being played and rewound—memories of a holiday in Turkey with father (Paul Mescal’s Calum) and daughter (Frankie Corio’s Sophie). As the picture breaks further with a shift from hotel room shenanigans to an airport farewell, we’re suddenly transported back in time to the moment itself. The frame is clear. The scenes are complete. Calum apologizes for the poor state of their lodgings (under construction and only one bed) before sneaking Sophie over to a different resort with a pool, games, and karaoke so they can have as much fun together as possible.

Charlotte Wells’ feature debut Aftersun therefore plays like a happy recollection at the start. We imagine Calum and Sophie sitting on a couch decades later with the footage playing on a television, reminiscing and rejoicing and knowing how many more good times they shared in the years to come. It’s not long, however, before the cracks begin to show. Lines of dialogue like Calum telling a stranger he never thought he’d make it to thirty. Tensions rising as he struggles to keep a smile for his eleven-year-old once the pull of depression grabs hold. And a stunning shift from sunny days on the beach to a dark, strobing rave ratcheting up the sense of melancholy to a deafening roar.

We must question what we’re watching as a result. How much is real beyond those disintegrating minutes caught on the camcorder? How much is filtered through the eyes of a child on the cusp of adolescence with rose-colored glasses about a playful father and an exotic locale with lust in the air? How much is reinterpreted with hindsight to find the signs that Calum couldn’t quite keep hidden even if Sophie didn’t quite understand them then? Moments like Calum refusing to sing feel like a betrayal one second and a cry for help the next. Genuine pleas to stay close and honest feel unfulfilled once the climax set to David Bowie and Queen’s “Under Pressure” hit us with a sledgehammer of metaphoric emotion.

And Wells leaves the details unspoken via a formally fluid, sensorial experience. She doesn’t overtly tell us what happens after Sophie goes home. She simply leaves clues via rugs, postcards, and a growing disjointed sense of linear space and time. Maybe we’re dealing with suicidal ideation. Maybe full-blown suicide. Perhaps Sophie is searching for answers because Calum isn’t there to provide them. Or maybe he is, but won’t. All we really know for certain is that their love for each other was undeniable—Mescal (unforgettably vulnerable) and Corio’s performances ensure it. But as too many have figured out from their own tragic lives, love isn’t always enough.