Review-Aftersun

A beautifully reflective film about love and relationships

I am on to the next set of Substack recommendations from people back in July. First up was

Kevin Pettit

’s recommendation of the Charlotte Wells debut feature film Aftersun starring Paul Mescal. Kevin writes

See You At The Movies

where he reviews new movies each week.

Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her father Calum (Paul Mescal) embark on a holiday abroad and we get to see a beautiful relationship unfold.

I’m almost certain this is the first film I’ve seen of Mescal’s, but I want to see everything he’s in now, and I’m filled with more excitement for the upcoming Gladiator II this fall. Aftersun is a story of memories of a young girl named Sophie (Frankie Corio) as she spends a holiday with her father Calum (Mescal) at a Turkish resort. The film’s languid pace reflects the rest and relaxation that the characters experience as they lounge by the pool during the day, enjoy dinners together in the evening, and video their time together on a handheld camera.

What drew me into this film was the way the actors are part of the filming process. There are a number of scenes in the film where Mescal and Corio are directly involved by holding the digital camera as characters, while simultaneously acting within the scene. The way director Charlotte Wells and cinematographer Gregory Oke capture these scenes is nothing short of remarkable, often shifting focus in a single shot from a television screen showing what the digital camera is capturing in real time to a reflection of a character in a window or mirror and back again.

Even when the characters are interacting on their own without the added complexity of the camera, they demonstrate an intimate relationship that is hard to capture on film. There is true love between the characters despite some unexplained estrangement between Calum and Sophie’s mother, made more impressive by the fact that Corio was not a trained actor and this was her first film role.

Some would call this a slow movie, one where nothing much really happens, and at face value they would be right. But this is not an action movies, it’s a relationship movie, and that is something it captures incredibly well. We come into the story at the beginning of the trip for the pair, and don’t immediately know the relationship between the characters. Wells allows that relationship to unfold in an incredibly organic nature and keeps the audience engaged to the end.