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Aftersun, 2022
Sophie (Frankie Corio) goes to a resort in Turkey with her father, Calum (Paul Mescal). The dynamics between father and daughter are somewhat unsteady: while they clearly care for each other, Calum struggles mightily with depression and anxiety, and Sophie is beginning to see and name her father’s behavior.
Grounded in strong performances, this one really hits home in its tumultuous final act.
I have to be very honest and say that I was kind of split on this movie until about the last 15-20 minutes or so. It wasn’t that there was anything bad about it. Not at all. It is a well-acted, memory-specific drama with an absolutely gorgeous setting. But sometimes when films mostly sit in observation, I can find myself feeling a bit listless.
But in the last twenty minutes, the film kicks into a higher gear. It breaks free from its zoomed in look at Calum and Sophie’s vacation and introduces some non-linear and more abstract elements. It’s a rewarding final act, and one that reverberates with many of the smaller moments that have come before. I don’t want to get into specifics, but I found the end of the film---and particularly one absolutely stellar sequence set to a distorted version of “Under Pressure”--incredibly emotionally resonant. After being sympathetic to the characters and watching their exploits and appreciating the performances, the final act brought a torrent of emotion for me and significantly upped my appreciation of the film.
Paul Mescal was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Calum, and I think that’s totally deserved. He plays a man who is masking a profound depression---someone who is trying to be better with his Tai Chi practice and self-help books, but still sinking. There’s an explicit framing of the film as being Sophie’s memories of this trip, with us catching glimpses of an adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) but not of her father. With his fate or role in her life unknown, it can be hard to read different moments between Calum and Sophie. “I love you Sophie. Never forget that.” reads a card in the room. On board a boat out to swim in the ocean, Calum confides to another man aboard that he didn’t think he’d “make it” to the age of 30. Is Sophie in some way keeping Calum anchored to life? Or is this trip really some sort of goodbye? Mescal does an amazing job of letting the cracks show in the carefree facade that Calum wears around Sophie.
Corio, in her film debut, is really excellent as Sophie. She loves her father, but isn’t old enough to recognize the signs and symptoms of what is really happening to Calum. She sees behavior from her dad that frustrates and annoys her. When he refuses to join her onstage for a karaoke performance, but then later offers to get her singing lessons, she snaps that she wishes he’d stop offering to buy things when he doesn’t have the money. Sophie watches with jealousy the older British teens who saunter around the resort. One young woman wears a wristband that allows her unlimited food and drinks at the resort’s different buildings. It’s very human and age-appropriate that Sophie’s heightened awareness of her social standing distracts her from what is really happening with her dad.
The film pulls off a pretty neat trick----particularly in regard to someone suffering from depression and teenage angst---in that very little goes wrong on their vacation. Sophie meets a boy her age, Michael (Brooklyn Toulson), who tends to hang out with the older kids. While this seems like a set up for bullying or sexual harassment/assault with Sophie frequently going off unsupervised with the older kids, they are just . . . some nice kids. The “problems” on their trip never amount to more than Sophie accidentally losing a diving mask her father bought for her. But for me, this really captures the problem with depression and anxiety, namely that it can be at its worst when things are seemingly just fine. Sophie and Calum SHOULD be happy. They should be carefree. But they aren’t. Mental health can feel the worst when we rationally know that we should be happy, but aren’t. I found Calum’s moments of despair incredibly relatable.
The movie also makes great use of its setting, alternating between sun-drenched beaches and then those same beaches in ominous darkness, with only the sound of the waves existing beyond the lights cast from the resort. This is a film about someone looking back at a childhood moment as an adult and understanding, but understanding too late. The brilliance and the darkness of the Turkish beachside resort perfectly capture that painful binary of childhood memories.
As I mentioned, it took me until the final act to really sink fully into the emotions of the film. The whole thing is well-observed and very specific in a way that makes it feel like a deeply personal story. I also had a bit of a struggle with the dynamic between Corio and Mescal. While the two have good rapport with each other and a clear comfort, they somehow never felt like a father and daughter to me. When I looked at them, I always saw an adult man and a little girl. While their interactions are innocuous enough, I couldn’t shut off quite a few internal red flags every time he went to rub sunscreen on her, or when they would be in a bed together. And while it might have been intentional, there were some things that weren’t really age appropriate, like a scene where Calum cleans off Sophie’s face. Obviously, your mileage may vary on this front---believing that kids and adults are children and their parents is one of those suspension of disbelief things that you either buy into or you don’t.
At first I found the film a bit slight, but then that last act hit me like a ton of bricks, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
Aftersun, 2022
Sophie (Frankie Corio) goes to a resort in Turkey with her father, Calum (Paul Mescal). The dynamics between father and daughter are somewhat unsteady: while they clearly care for each other, Calum struggles mightily with depression and anxiety, and Sophie is beginning to see and name her father’s behavior.
Grounded in strong performances, this one really hits home in its tumultuous final act.
I have to be very honest and say that I was kind of split on this movie until about the last 15-20 minutes or so. It wasn’t that there was anything bad about it. Not at all. It is a well-acted, memory-specific drama with an absolutely gorgeous setting. But sometimes when films mostly sit in observation, I can find myself feeling a bit listless.
But in the last twenty minutes, the film kicks into a higher gear. It breaks free from its zoomed in look at Calum and Sophie’s vacation and introduces some non-linear and more abstract elements. It’s a rewarding final act, and one that reverberates with many of the smaller moments that have come before. I don’t want to get into specifics, but I found the end of the film---and particularly one absolutely stellar sequence set to a distorted version of “Under Pressure”--incredibly emotionally resonant. After being sympathetic to the characters and watching their exploits and appreciating the performances, the final act brought a torrent of emotion for me and significantly upped my appreciation of the film.
Paul Mescal was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Calum, and I think that’s totally deserved. He plays a man who is masking a profound depression---someone who is trying to be better with his Tai Chi practice and self-help books, but still sinking. There’s an explicit framing of the film as being Sophie’s memories of this trip, with us catching glimpses of an adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) but not of her father. With his fate or role in her life unknown, it can be hard to read different moments between Calum and Sophie. “I love you Sophie. Never forget that.” reads a card in the room. On board a boat out to swim in the ocean, Calum confides to another man aboard that he didn’t think he’d “make it” to the age of 30. Is Sophie in some way keeping Calum anchored to life? Or is this trip really some sort of goodbye? Mescal does an amazing job of letting the cracks show in the carefree facade that Calum wears around Sophie.
Corio, in her film debut, is really excellent as Sophie. She loves her father, but isn’t old enough to recognize the signs and symptoms of what is really happening to Calum. She sees behavior from her dad that frustrates and annoys her. When he refuses to join her onstage for a karaoke performance, but then later offers to get her singing lessons, she snaps that she wishes he’d stop offering to buy things when he doesn’t have the money. Sophie watches with jealousy the older British teens who saunter around the resort. One young woman wears a wristband that allows her unlimited food and drinks at the resort’s different buildings. It’s very human and age-appropriate that Sophie’s heightened awareness of her social standing distracts her from what is really happening with her dad.
The film pulls off a pretty neat trick----particularly in regard to someone suffering from depression and teenage angst---in that very little goes wrong on their vacation. Sophie meets a boy her age, Michael (Brooklyn Toulson), who tends to hang out with the older kids. While this seems like a set up for bullying or sexual harassment/assault with Sophie frequently going off unsupervised with the older kids, they are just . . . some nice kids. The “problems” on their trip never amount to more than Sophie accidentally losing a diving mask her father bought for her. But for me, this really captures the problem with depression and anxiety, namely that it can be at its worst when things are seemingly just fine. Sophie and Calum SHOULD be happy. They should be carefree. But they aren’t. Mental health can feel the worst when we rationally know that we should be happy, but aren’t. I found Calum’s moments of despair incredibly relatable.
The movie also makes great use of its setting, alternating between sun-drenched beaches and then those same beaches in ominous darkness, with only the sound of the waves existing beyond the lights cast from the resort. This is a film about someone looking back at a childhood moment as an adult and understanding, but understanding too late. The brilliance and the darkness of the Turkish beachside resort perfectly capture that painful binary of childhood memories.
As I mentioned, it took me until the final act to really sink fully into the emotions of the film. The whole thing is well-observed and very specific in a way that makes it feel like a deeply personal story. I also had a bit of a struggle with the dynamic between Corio and Mescal. While the two have good rapport with each other and a clear comfort, they somehow never felt like a father and daughter to me. When I looked at them, I always saw an adult man and a little girl. While their interactions are innocuous enough, I couldn’t shut off quite a few internal red flags every time he went to rub sunscreen on her, or when they would be in a bed together. And while it might have been intentional, there were some things that weren’t really age appropriate, like a scene where Calum cleans off Sophie’s face. Obviously, your mileage may vary on this front---believing that kids and adults are children and their parents is one of those suspension of disbelief things that you either buy into or you don’t.
At first I found the film a bit slight, but then that last act hit me like a ton of bricks, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.