Aftersun: A Stunning Debut from Charlotte Wells with Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio

A stunning debut from Charlotte Wells.

Aftersun, the feature debut from writer/director Charlotte Wells, is seemingly split in two. There is the main plot: the holidays of father Calum (Paul Mescal) and his daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) in Turkey. Then there’s an enigmatic framing device, which sees adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) re-examining her memories of that trip.

While adult Sophie only appears in flashes throughout Aftersun, these moments lend a layer of melancholy to the holiday scenes. Instead of a linear look at a father-daughter journey, Wells turns Aftersun into a painful encapsulation of a child’s desire to truly understand their parent — and the frustration that comes with such an insurmountable task. The effective blend of past and future coupled with the beautifully natural performances from Mescal and Corio make Aftersun a film that will stay with you long after it’s finished.

Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio go on a father-daughter vacation.

If you’re a fan of Mescal’s charming and vulnerable performance in Normal People, you’ll love his work in Aftersun. Playing a young father, Mescal takes on a role that is both more mature and a little harder to read. It’s clear that Calum is very fond of Sophie, but it’s also clear that there are parts of his life that he isn’t quite ready to share with her just yet. Throughout Aftersun, Calum remains a mysterious figure, sometimes disappearing by himself or on a nighttime walk. A scene in which Calum tells Sophie about a pivotal childhood memory sheds light on his occasional estrangement, but we never learn the full truth.

This inscrutability is intentional, as the film presents Calum through Sophie’s eyes. It remains unknowable in the same way our parents and their adult affairs can seem unknowable at a young age. However, in Corio’s hands, it’s clear that Sophie realizes something is wrong. She’s just not sure what.

Aftersun is Corio’s first film role, but you wouldn’t know it from the strength of his performance. She and Mescal are a perfect match, easily capturing all the complexities of Sophie and Calum’s relationship. Corio in particular is responsible for anchoring many of Aftersun’s most emotionally intense sequences, including a karaoke night that will have you hunkered down with anxiety. She nails every moment. Whether Sophie is accompanying teenagers on vacation or wandering around the resort on her own, you’re invested in her all the way, thanks to Corio.

Aftersun has no easy answers.

Aftersun isn’t interested in revealing every bit of Sophie and Calum’s story. If you want straight answers, you won’t get them. What you will get is a deep dive into our search for meaning in memory.

In Aftersun’s most surreal sequences, adult Sophie – who is now the same age as Calum when they made the trip together – wanders through crowds of dancers, trying to catch a glimpse of her father through flashes of lights. strobes. Elsewhere, she wakes up on her birthday and turns on the home videos she took of that vacation long ago, poring over the footage for clues. His search for meaning in the past also makes us look harder. Is there anything we can catch about Calum that she might have missed? Or have memory distortions made the truth impossible to decipher?

Added to these ideas of unreliable memory is Wells’ precise direction. She distances Calum and Sophie on screen, often filtering important moments through walls, glass or home movies. Auditory distance is created in scenes where the characters’ voices are slightly muffled, such as when Calum takes a call in a phone booth. At other times, scenes unfold in mirrors or through the viewfinder of a camera, and we are reminded that we are looking at the reflection of a conversation, not the conversation itself. We experience a sense of estrangement, just as adult Sophie experiences a sense of estrangement from her vacation memories. We look back with her fascinated, but unable to get closer.

A third-act dance scene where Sophie and Calum go wild is as close to catharsis as Aftersun gets, but even then there’s a sense of loss that comes with it. It’s perhaps the best encapsulation of the film’s combination of sweetness and sadness, and it makes for a truly poignant climax.

In the end, Wells, Mescal, and Corio created a film that was touching, tragic, and one of the best looks at parent-child relationships in years.

Aftersun was reviewed at the 60th New York Film Festival; he is now playing in theaters.