Aftersun

I spent lunchtime today in a cinema watching Aftersun and I feel dazed and dazzled in the way you can after too much time at the beach.   It’s a beautiful, intimate and visually stunning look back at a holiday Sophie had with her Dad in Turkey when she was 11.  There are coming of age moments certainly but overall this is a tender, if oblique, close-up of a parent though the lense of childhood, and a masterful first film from Charlotte Wells. 

Paul Mescal does his semi-magical thing here, as in Normal People.  I didn’t love Sally Rooney’s book mainly because I struggled to get past Connell’s treatment of Marianne but I absolutely ‘got’ what Connell was about when I finally watched Mescal in the tv series.  Here, as Calum in Aftersun, he manages to be spectacular in his quiet portrayal of a man who is a loving, fun father but with largely unarticulated adult demons too.  

The two leads have a wonderful, natural chemistry and the fragmented nature of the narrative with the use of the video camera Sophie (Frankie Corio) is wielding turn it into a kaleidoscope of memories, jumbled up but bringing an emotional truth if not narrative clarity.  The ending was a moment of quiet brilliance which didn’t explain but did pull it all together into a gorgeous whole.   

Have I used enough superlatives yet?  I absolutely loved it, although it has left me with a sense of melancholy I found hard to shake, even when I emerged into the sunshine on the Southbank, filled with happy pre-Christmas tourists.  A man behind me on the way out said 'that was amazing but I am going to be sad for the rest of the day now'. This is definitely not a Christmas movie but it’s certainly the best I have seen this year.