Calum (Paul Mescal) is taking his 11 year old daughter Sophie ( Frankie Corio ) on a holiday to Turkey. The holiday is documented via home movies and incidents viewed from Sophie's remembered perspective. Through it we see the adult Sophie's memories of her charming yet unknowable father. The film is peppered with a quickly edited slow motion disco scene where you see the Sophie looking for glimpses of her father in a crowded club, as an eleven year old, then an an adult. Her father coming suggestively in and out of focus. Quite often throughout the film Sophie sees her father slightly out of the frame, peaked at over or through something. These are just some of the visual beauties of this film debut by writer and director Charlotte Wells. Sophie is a girl on the edge of adolescence and is just awakening to being curious how older teenagers behave, and intimate relationships. The film expertly captures this halfway state between childhood and adolescence proper.
Initially this seems like just an ordinary holiday in a Mediterranean hotel. Calum is, however, not at ease with himself. There are hints of estrangement from his own family, that he never wants to return to Scotland. So much here is lightly suggested, because we are seeing things from teenage Sophie's recollection. Small things viewed from her adult perspective, have much more significance now. She has to ask her father twice what he did on his eleventh birthday, and begrudgingly tells her he had to remind his own family that it was his birthday. Sophie organises people to sing to him on his birthday, a scene followed by a back shot of Calum sobbing his heart out alone in the hotel room. A penultimate scene in the movie when they are both dancing to Under Pressure becomes unaccountably gut wrenching, as you can sense that this is a last goodbye. We are never told what happened to her father, nor why this particular holiday proved to be so significant. Its clear he has disappeared from her life at some point hereafter, we know not how or why and are left speculating.
Charlotte Wells, is an extremely promising film maker, who was so fortunate to find a girl as naturally gifted as Frankie and obviously an actor of Mescal's caliber. Who does what he does best - suppressed emotion, staring self absorbed off screen, fleeting expressions almost thrown away, but all are tellingly significant. Aftersun is a movie with a quiet impact, unexpectedly grasping you and pulling you into its emotional undertow.
CARROT REVIEW - 7/8
No comments:
Post a Comment