It has been approximately 460 days since I last wrote about a singular film. Part of that is life getting in the way, but even more than that, I just haven’t seen a film that I was passionate about since October of 2021 that I cared enough to write about. I came close after watching The Worst Person In The World, but the ending, which I didn’t love, felt too thorny to tackle adequately. The whole everything of Licorice Pizza ruled that one out pretty early on. There are a handful of films from 2022 that I considered writing about, Everything Everywhere All At Once is the obvious pick, but I also considered it for the magnificently representative Bones And All. It feels weird, but perhaps the most I’ve ever seen myself on a screen somehow came in a movie about cannibalism. I also would love to eventually write about Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going To The World’s Fair. Schoenbrun’s phenomenal feature about transness has stuck with me more than almost any other film this year. I say almost because not a single film from this year, and perhaps any year, has stuck with me more than Aftersun. It feels fitting that a movie about memory is permanently seared into mine.
Aftersun is a generational film in every sense of the word. It is quite literally generational because it retells the story of Sophie, played brilliantly by Frankie Corio in her acting debut, and her dad Calum, played by the love of my life Paul Mescal, on vacation together in Turkey when Sophie was approximately 11 years old. The film opens on a shot of Sophie filming her dad before we get a glimpse of grown-up Sophie rewatching, then rewinding a videotape, reliving the holiday, and, more importantly, the time spent with her mysterious father. Aftersun plays with the idea of memory magnificently, using a camcorder to do so. Wells is far from the first director to tell the story of childhood memories on screen; even this year, we got autobiographical retellings from Steven Soderberg and James Gray, but the proximity that Wells has to these memories just a couple decades prior is what elevates this film to another level.
I have always been fascinated by the idea of a director or musician pursuing their passion project with their first release. It makes sense; if you only get one shot at this, you’re going to try to tell the story that means the most to you. It would’ve been easy for Wells to write a more conventional film and come back to this story if she got a chance down the road, but with funding from A24 and producing backing from Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski, Wells crafted a vision that is so uniquely her own.
Synoptically there’s not much to this movie. On the surface, it is a very straightforward retelling of Sophie and Calum on vacation for a week. They do ordinary things that one would do on vacation; they go to the hotel pool, play billiards, go to a karaoke event, and make friends (well, Sophie does). It is your typical vacation drama meets coming-of-age tale. Beneath the surface, oh my god, it is so much more. There are three entirely distinct ways to go from here. We could dive into the idea of memory and preserving those memories and how future generations are going to have every single thing at their disposal at a moment’s notice. I’m curious if that memory, and what it means to long for those memories, is going to mean something entirely different. Is Sophie’s child, who we hear briefly, going to have that same sense of emotions reliving moments with their parents if they are easier to relive than going through old camcorder footage where technology was so different? Wells doesn’t dive into this, and it is decidedly not the point of the film in the slightest, but it is a fascinating dynamic that I can’t help but obsess over. Also, not the point, but since we’re already talking about it, the shot of Sophie and Calum in the reflection of the television set says more in 30 seconds than most films did in two hours this year. There’s a similar shot in We’re All Going To The World’s Fair where Casey is seen in the reflection of their computer, and they are undoubtedly my two favorite shots of the year. We love filmmakers who are so acutely aware of the moment they are making films.
To go off of that single shot, this film looks so beautiful. There’s a version of this film that is just okay, solely off of Wells’s award-worthy script and the outstanding acting — oops, I promised myself I wasn’t going to mention the A word, and I absolutely refuse to get my hopes up about the O***** — but the film is elevated to a borderline masterpiece thanks to the brilliant work from cinematographer Gregory Oke, just the second feature he has worked on. There’s a sense of dread and mystery that Oke captures exceptionally well, but it’s not necessarily the dread that comes from a horror movie, but instead, the dread that you, the viewer, will be absolutely broken by the time the credits roll.
The magnificent camerawork paired with Blair McClendon’s superb editing makes the intertwined dance scene with Calum and Sophie set to a haunting rendition of “Under Pressure” paired with the rave sequence hits like a ton of bricks every single time. The use of music, in general, is masterful by Wells. The rendition of “Under Pressure” is superb on its own, but the specific use of it ties the film together. The soundtrack is excellent and timely without bashing you over the head with it. It feels natural in a way that many period pieces do not. Sophie’s performance of “Losing My Religion” was excellent and one of the film’s best moments. The musical selection will fly under the radar because so much of the movie was operating at a higher frequency, but it feels like each song was the only possible selection for each moment.
Perhaps I'm way off on this, but I wonder if Aftersun could be made at any other time. I'm using an antiquated way of thinking, sure, but the struggles of Calum and the way they are captured feel decidedly 2022. If it came a decade earlier I’m not sure the ambiguity, and even the idea of Calum dealing with some mental struggles, would've played the same. This is more me projecting, but I'm also curious how the ambiguity would've played if this movie came out in 2032 instead. Wells knew that the audience of today would accept that Calum was going through something without Wells revealing every single detail. We are intentionally left in the dark about what precisely those demons are. Spelling things out would make for a boring film. Instead, we are set on the same journey that Sophie goes on, where we are fully aware that this person we think we know so much about is actually much more mysterious than we could have ever imagined
I have never seen a child/parent movie set quite like this. We often see the dynamic between a child coming to terms with their parent being a fully formed person and having empathy toward their struggles. Still, we are usually told what those struggles are, and it is apparent in the end that the child has come to terms with those struggles; think Lady Bird, for example. The other recent film that plays brilliantly with this idea is Céline Sciamma’s breathtaking Petite Maman but without the memory component the way Wells has. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Wells has mentioned Tomboy, another Sciamma film, as an influence on her. The Sciamma influence is also crystal clear by just how soft, and tender Aftersun is. Not to mention the care taken to portray Sophie as an actual real-life human with complex feelings and emotions, something that save for Sciamma and Hayao Miyasaki, so many filmmakers struggle with when writing about children. Wells also mentioned Chantal Akerman as a major influence, which is crystal clear in the pacing of this film and a couple of shots of Sophie and Calum. As we see grown-up Sophie in her apartment with her partner, and when she watches the old home videos, it is not clear if she has come to terms with who her father truly was and how much she truly ever knew the real him. It is truly astounding that Wells was able to get this film made with how our collective film culture is now and how we need everything tied up in a nice feel-good bow or left open enough for approximately 23 sequels.
Since we have already hinted at the ambiguity throughout the film, I guess we should talk about the ending, a conversation that bores me a bit. It’s not because I don’t like the ending, quite the contrary actually, as it is the best ending of the year in my book. Instead, I don’t think theorizing things to death is healthy for our collective film discourse. I get that it is the way things are and what sells, but it is irrelevant, especially in a movie like this. A small part of me is glad that this is such a small film because it means I don’t have to be thinkpieced to death as I have been about the ending of TÁR. The muddiness of the conclusion is precisely why Aftersun is a masterpiece. There are countless meanings about what Calum walking through the double doors at the end actually means. My favorite part about movies is that every single person can find their own meaning behind them, and that’s a valid takeaway, regardless. I have my own reading of the ending, but that’s boring, and like Charlotte Wells, I want to keep it a secret for now.