Directed by Charlotte Wells. Starring Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio. 2022.
Charlotte Wells makes her directorial debut with a staggering achievement of a film, one that leaves the audience shaken by its quiet beauty and tragedy.
It stars Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio as our leads, a father and daughter enjoying a holiday to Turkey together, as they both go through formative moments in their life.
Mescal, fresh off his star making turn as Connell in Normal People, makes another enormous impression here as a vulnerable and stoic character, but one who is very different to Connell.
He plays Callum, a loving father who on the surface is a fun and happy man, but behind close doors is struggling deeply with his mental health, and we see that play out achingly in this film. In a devastating and beautifully underplayed scene, he mentions how he “never saw himself at 30” and this is an ominous dread that hangs over the rest of the film.
The sun soaked background wonderfully contradicts with the dark inner turmoil Callum is trying to keep from the surface, and in a few haunting scenes, is unable to.
The ending and the characters fate is left ambiguous, for the audience to decide what happened and take from it what they will. Everyone will bring their own experiences to this too, and from a very personal level, as someone who lost their father at a young age, this film brilliantly captured the yearning feeling of looking back at experiences with them and realising they were protecting us so much and we never even knew it.
Charlotte Wells is telling the story of her life and her relationship with her father, and at the same time she is telling a universal story of fatherhood and mental health.
Aftersun achieves many things, it is a funny and heartwarming tale of a father and daughter on holiday, it is a exploration of parenthood and mental health, it is a coming of age film, and it is a time capsule of a directors memories.
It is the film of the festival.
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