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Aftersun
Despite lovely performances from the leads, 2022's Aftersun is a confusing and slightly pretentious look at a father/daughter relationship that makes the audience work too hard at looking for something that never happens because the film seems to be too personal for the filmmaker to make a real connection with the viewer.
This is the story of a pre-teen named Sophie who is looking back on a very special vacation that she took with her father 20 years prior to the beginning of this film, which supposedly finds Sophie reconciling the father she knew with the man he really was.
Director and screenwriter Charlotte Wells has crafted a story that feels terribly personal, personal to the point that a cinematic wall comes up between the film and the audience. Never felt like Wells' intentions came through a lot of father/daughter bonding scenes that we keep thinking are going to build to some huge reveal about Sophie and her father that never happens. Initially, I theorized that this was about Sophie's unhappiness about her parents not being together anymore, but then we get a scene where Sophie asks her dad, Calum, why does he say he loves Sophie's mother if they're not together anymore.
My next theory was that Calum, was dying or had recently died and this is what triggered Sophie's look back at this vacation because Calum works very hard throughout the film giviing Sophie his full attention and doing whatever she wanted. Calum's complete attention to Sophie almost has an incestuous quality to it, due to Calum's complete lack of socialization with adults. Calum is a young and very attractive man who should have been swimming in female attention but Sophie seems to be the only person in his life who matters. Then, for some reason at the beginning of the third act, he refuses to do a karaoke duet with her that separates the two for the first time in the movie. We also get shots of him running alone on the beach at night as well as a scene of him weeping uncontrollably which goes by with no explanation. I also found the hand-held camera, giving us the home movie effect, very annoying.
The opening credits imply that this film is British, but the actors sound Australian and the movie was filmed in Turkey. Frankie Corio is adorable as Sophie and Paul Mescal, whose eyes one can get lost in, is so charismatic as Sophie's father that his performance has earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination. As good as Mescal and Corio are, I just couldn't figure out what this movie was about.
Despite lovely performances from the leads, 2022's Aftersun is a confusing and slightly pretentious look at a father/daughter relationship that makes the audience work too hard at looking for something that never happens because the film seems to be too personal for the filmmaker to make a real connection with the viewer.
This is the story of a pre-teen named Sophie who is looking back on a very special vacation that she took with her father 20 years prior to the beginning of this film, which supposedly finds Sophie reconciling the father she knew with the man he really was.
Director and screenwriter Charlotte Wells has crafted a story that feels terribly personal, personal to the point that a cinematic wall comes up between the film and the audience. Never felt like Wells' intentions came through a lot of father/daughter bonding scenes that we keep thinking are going to build to some huge reveal about Sophie and her father that never happens. Initially, I theorized that this was about Sophie's unhappiness about her parents not being together anymore, but then we get a scene where Sophie asks her dad, Calum, why does he say he loves Sophie's mother if they're not together anymore.
My next theory was that Calum, was dying or had recently died and this is what triggered Sophie's look back at this vacation because Calum works very hard throughout the film giviing Sophie his full attention and doing whatever she wanted. Calum's complete attention to Sophie almost has an incestuous quality to it, due to Calum's complete lack of socialization with adults. Calum is a young and very attractive man who should have been swimming in female attention but Sophie seems to be the only person in his life who matters. Then, for some reason at the beginning of the third act, he refuses to do a karaoke duet with her that separates the two for the first time in the movie. We also get shots of him running alone on the beach at night as well as a scene of him weeping uncontrollably which goes by with no explanation. I also found the hand-held camera, giving us the home movie effect, very annoying.
The opening credits imply that this film is British, but the actors sound Australian and the movie was filmed in Turkey. Frankie Corio is adorable as Sophie and Paul Mescal, whose eyes one can get lost in, is so charismatic as Sophie's father that his performance has earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination. As good as Mescal and Corio are, I just couldn't figure out what this movie was about.