Film Review - Aftersun (2022)

A quiet plot with a marching band of hidden messages behind it.

It’s hard to believe that this highly-praised hit is Charlotte Wells’ first feature film. Its effortlessness implies a confidence that you’d only expect from a prolific director whose already prosperous career means they can afford to be daringly simplistic.

Aftersun requires trust between the audience and the director. With its many subtleties, intricacies and unspoken messages, we have to believe that the things we are picking up on are intentional. This, again, is difficult with a director we aren’t familiar with. Yet, Wells’ has a way of giving us certainty in her intentions. She has a gift for creating moments that appear insignificant on the surface while making it clear that we can trust our instincts: that there is something to be read between the lines.

The uncomplicated plot follows a dad, Calum (Paul Mescal), and a daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio) as they spend time together on a package holiday. With help from flashforward scenes of an older Sophie and the interjections of camcorder footage, we know that this holiday is being looked back on, the moments of it replayed. This not only makes us wonder what the reason for that is, but wonder why we anticipate the reason to be a bad one.

I believe that the film foreshadows the ending throughout. For my analysis to make sense, I need to first reveal what I assume the conclusion to be. At first, I thought it was obvious and didn’t consider that it would be open to interpretation. However, after hearing others’ thoughts I see that it’s necessary to establish that I believe Calum commits suicide directly following the holiday. The rest of this review analyses the film through the lens of this interpretation.

The film plays with the idea that we know something bad is going to happen, but we don’t know when. One way this is done is through a series of incidents where the audience is made to believe that Calum has met his end. These include tense scenes where Calum scuba dives after lying about being certified, and a moment where he runs drunkenly into the sea until he is no longer visible.

Both of these events are followed by prolonged shots of the water. You’re waiting for the sequence to cut or for Calum to reemerge, for what seems like forever. The stillness of these shots is suffocating; your breath is suspended until faith in Calum’s survival is restored. This is an example of how masterful the pacing of this film is as, despite the lack of an intricate storyline, Wells doesn’t let the audience’s attention waver for a second. You’re gripped by your emotional investment and the suspense created by the sense of impending doom.

The ominous tone of the film is almost sadistically juxtaposed with the setting, making the ending even more disturbing. Calum’s solemn ghost-like state is interrupted by poolside noise, cheesy resort entertainment and drinking warm pints on plastic chairs. In my interpretation this represents, fittingly and almost comically, purgatory in the form of a Turkish resort.

This place that we universally connote with sun-kissed joy is quite lifeless, as far as holidays go, when you look beyond the surface. It’s a setting that culminates the fundamentals of human existence and isn’t exactly known for giving anyone a zest for life, which allows Calum to maintain his emptiness and suffering. The timeline of the film also feeds into this metaphor, as purgatory is an interim between life and death: precisely what this holiday is to Calum.

The most tragic element of this film for me isn’t Calum’s suicide, but the fact that he had already decided to commit the act before the holiday began. To me, many aspects of the film allude to this interpretation. These include the moments where Calum is reckless with the little money he has, because he knows he won’t need it anymore, and scenes where we see him try to fit a lifetime of memories and fatherly advice into the 2-week holiday.

In my eyes, Calum is already gone. He appears vacant and numb, and checked out to the extent that nothing could change his mind. His aforementioned disregard for his safety and finances is a way of portraying him floating through life without a care because he is no longer concerned with earthly sorrows: he is above them now, literally.

His unchanging mind and lack of emotion are particularly evident in the poignant karaoke scene. After refusing to join Sophie on stage, Calum watches her sing the R.E.M classic Losing My Religion in front of an unenthusiastic crowd. Wells decides to have Sophie sing the song in its entirety, with the interminable rendition quickly becoming painful to watch. The longer it goes on the more the urge grows to jump up and sing with her. The fact that Calum doesn’t feel this urge and stays firmly in his seat, makes it evident that his dissociation from life has reached the point of no return.

Mescal’s ability to play a character that is simultaneously experiencing numbness and internal suffering, while concealing this from his daughter by forcing himself to give all he has left, is highly commendable. We are seeing the holiday through the eyes of a naive 11-year-old with fleeting signs of Calum’s state going innocently unnoticed. Wells effortlessly manipulates our perspective, both subtly and startlingly.

An example of when our perspective changes dramatically is when we see clips of Sophie’s older self. We see her anger and despair starkly contrasted with her happy-go-lucky attitude as an adolescent. The retrospective lens that the camcorder footage offers leaves us confronted with the truth behind Calum’s behaviour, which we were at first seeing through a young dewy-eyed Sophie.

The two of them are on different holidays altogether. The circle-of-life metaphor comes to mind when you contemplate this being the end of Calum’s life and the beginning of Sophie’s. While Sophie is finding her feet in the world of boys and teenage insecurities, Calum is preparing for the end.

When assuming Calum commits suicide directly after the holiday, and that neither of them see each other again, dramatic irony suddenly plays a very powerful role in the film. In one of the final, most heartbreaking scenes, Calum convinces Sophie to dance with him as ‘Under Pressure’ by Queen plays sinisterly in the background, with the line ‘this is our last dance’ hitting home to the audience that this scene is depicting just that. We then realise that we have seen all of their lasts during this film: their last laughs together, the last dinner, the last photo of them and the making of their last memories of each other. The combination of knowing what’s to come and watching Sophie dance carelessly, unaware that it’s the last one they’ll share, is enough to reduce any audience member to tears.

During the slow-motion dance scene there are sharp, frequent transitions that take us to what appears to be a nightclub. We have been brought here at previous points in the film, very faintly showing a figure under the strobe lights that appears to be Older Sophie. We first assume that this is an actual venue. However, during the dance scene, both Calum and Older Sophie appear there while they seem to be around the same age; this impossibility proves that it is in fact a supernatural, imagined place.

I believe that the nightclub represents Older Sophie’s mind. It’s the only place where her dad still exists; where she can shout at him, cry to him and plead with him, and dance with him when she misses him, yet still eternally unable to save him or get the answers she craves in order to move on with her life. The lights are extremely disorientating, symbolising her inner turmoil and how she must have been replaying the events of the holiday trying to make sense of it, contemplating whether she could have saved him if she’d read the signs.

Like all of the most heartbreaking films, Aftersun doesn’t have a happy ending. We see no resolution for Sophie; no sense of peace or understanding. The audience is left fearing that Sophie’s life can never be the same after the destruction that her dad left behind. We get to see their bond right before they get ripped apart. It’s cinematic excellence in the cruellest form, and while I may not have the strength to rewatch it, it’s certainly one to remember whether you want to or not.