Film Analysis in 10 Slides
Memory Recollected With Empathy: Charlotte Wells’s AFTERSUN (2022)
On MUBI in March 2023
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Synopsis
Aftersun won the French Touch Prize of the Jury at Cannes. The 11-year- old Sophie (Frankie Corio) spends her holiday with her father Calum (Paul Mescal) at a budget resort in Turkey. Calum has already separated from her mother and moved to London from Edinburgh. The sensitive Sophie understands her loving father’s financial struggles. But it takes the adult Sophie to reminisce the holiday with her absent father with empathy in the light of her life experience.
Charlotte Wells’s Tuesday
Charlotte Wells made three short films which are on YouTube: Tuesday (2015), Laps (2017) and Blue Christmas (2017) before Aftersun. Among them her student film Tuesday (2015) could be the genesis for Aftersun, as Wells’s first short film is about a young girl living with her divorced mother who is married to another man. The film captures her grief when she goes to her father’s flat as usual on a Tuesday night but finds it empty.
The Structure Of Aftersun
Aftersun opens with the adult Sophie watching her recording in miniDV camera the interview with her father during her holiday at Turkey. It evokes a collage of images from that trip as remembered by the adult Sophie in a rave sequence. The rest of the film is full of her reminiscences of her father at the resort punctuated by the rave sequences. The structure is a mosaic of Sophie’s past, present and her dream world of the rave.
Memory Recollected With Empathy
The Turkey trip turned out to be Sophie’s last holiday with her absent father and his farewell to her. Hence there is an air of melancholy in her reminiscences of him. The Turkey sequences aren’t entirely in her point of view. There are also scenes without her in the omniscient point of view revealing his depression. In retrospect the adult Sophie must have understood this part of her father to a certain extent, adding to her melancholy.
Rave Sequences — Spoiler Alert
The rave sequences in Aftersun are shot in a strobe-lit darkroom. The last scene in the resort shows Calum dancing to an appropriately titled song “Last Dance”. Sophie just watches him. This is intercut with a rave sequence. There are fleeting glimpses of the adult Sophie watching his dance in the rave. She keeps failing in her attempts to get close to him. In the end they are in embrace but he slips away.
Acting
One of the merits of Aftersun is Charlotte Wells’s choice of actors. Paul Mescal evokes the right mix of charm and vulnerability as Calum which got him an Oscar nomination. The newcomer Frankie Corio is very natural in the role of the younger Sophie, making it a memorable performance. Wells should be credited for directing the actors skillfully and bringing out the bond between the father and daughter that is central to the film.
Cinematography
The amateurish MiniDV camera sequences evoke the way the memory of the past will be recollected by adult Sophie in Aftersun. Reason why many other Turkey scenes are perhaps not framed neatly. They would have been in stark contrast with the camcorder recording otherwise. The rave sequences with strobe lights create a dream world in which Sophie can see her father only fleetingly. It’s impossible to hold on to him and get to know him fully.
Tribute To Akerman — Spoiler Alert
At the end there is a 360-degree pan like the one in La Chambre (1972) by Chantal Akerman. It covers the past — the replaying of Sophie bidding farewell to Calum at the airport, present — the adult Sophie on her sofa with the MiniDV, and her dream world — Calum who recorded the video at the airport going out of the door and entering the rave in which she can see him dancing in her dream. This signifies the film’s structure.
Closing Thoughts
There is a scene in which the adult Sophie’s feet are on the rug her father bought although he couldn’t afford it. As her partner wishes her happy birthday, Sophie hears her son’s cries. It gives the sense that father absence is a recurring theme. Aftersun is one of the best films of 2022 as Charlotte Wells displays her directorial skills in it by using film language to give glimpses of the inner world of its characters.
