A Cannes award winner for Edinburgh, Scotland-born writer-director Charlotte Wells, “Aftersun” is the story of a young woman remembering a trip she took as a preteen with her troubled, but loving father. When the film begins, we see some video images captured on a late 1980s-early 1990s digital camera. The girl is Sophie (Frankie Corio). Her father, whose wrist is in a cast, is Calum (Paul Mescal of “God’s Creatures”), who signs off on a phone call with Sophie’s mum with the words, “Love you,” even though they are no longer together.
Sophie asks her dad about about this. It’s awkward. The 30-year-old father and daughter, who are mistaken as siblings, are on a bus trip to a sunny Turkish Mediterranean resort. They stay at a seaside hotel that has a pool and dances after dinner and other families.
The switch from Sophie filming with the camera to a movie camera filming them is a bit awkward, calling attention to the artifice. Calum, who is based in London, sometimes calls Glasgow resident Sophie “Puppet.” She navigates the entertainment the hotel offers to children her age. What she finds is a young man more or less her age with whom she plays a real (and obviously metaphorical) motorbike race arcade game, zoom-zoom. How eager children are at this age are to grow up, we are reminded. Sophie also finds herself allowed entry into group of older kids in part because she can play pool. Her father, who spends a lot of time on his own, teaches her how to break a hold on her wrists, if she needs to, a form of self-defense. Sophie overhears one of the older girls talk nonchalantly about a noncoital sexual encounter she had with a boy behind a bush.
In many ways, “Aftersun” is a classic indie effort from Wells, whose short films have garnered praise at festivals. “Aftersun” is an autobiographical coming-of-age effort, complete with dream-like flashing images of people we cannot identify. These are like half-remembered events that only become clear later on. The sky is full of paragliders, odd-looking angels flying about. You cannot help but wonder if any of them are going to come crashing into the frame or the pool. We see a book by Scottish artist Margaret Tait, a pioneering, postwar poet and filmmaker, who may be one of Wells’ inspirations. Calum, who practices tai chi and has a book on the subject, is obviously experiencing some sort of crisis, and the air around him is fraught and full despair and danger. You just know that something terrible is going to happen. Calum appears to be self-harming, ergo the wrist cast, which he cuts off, and a shoulder injury that Sophie notices. In one scene, Calum balances precariously on a hotel balcony railing. Sophie will find herself forced to perform R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” of all things by herself when her dad suddenly changes his mind about singing karaoke with her.
“Aftersun” is a shining example of the pandemic-spawned crop of the cinema of unease. Mescal, who makes quite an impression in “God’s Creatures,” has been receiving deserved rave reviews for his work in “Aftersun.” He should be in the awards race this year. Corio, too, is wonderful. In one of the film’s powerful moments near the end, Sophie gets a group of strangers to sing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” to her father on his 31st birthday in an ancient amphitheater. Indeed, he is not.
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'AFTERSUN'
Grade: B+
MPAA rating: R (for some language and brief sexual material)
Running time: 1:42
How to watch: Now in theaters
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