A Review of Aftersun (2022)
Updated: Jun 15, 2023
Written by Lelja, one of our film writers, and edited by Greg, one of our editors!
Explaining what it feels like to feel your heart and souls bleed and scream to get out of your body to your loved ones is very difficult. The complete contrast between the way one can look so calm and almost apathetic coexisting with the violent inner turmoil is the biggest source of conflict between human beings.
Aftersun (2022) shows this.
It shows the before, during, and the after. What it means to love someone with this invisible illness. What it means to live with them, to lose them. What it means to keep living after they're gone.
Aftersun (2022) shows also what it means to be them.
Paul Mescal did an incredible job. His average expression of boredom is intrinsic with the difficulty depressed people face in filtering their emotions to communicate with someone else. It’s like a broken tab. You need the right pressure and intense focus to avoid spilling all of the water out. It’s draining. Insanely draining.
Frankie portrays a very smart child. Smart because of her environment. When you grow up in a setting of unsaid you become very quick in understanding it. She is at the age where she starts to see that her dad is somewhat of a problem, of an anomaly. Why can't they have fun like everyone else, why does it feel like everything is so difficult, why can’t he just sing at karaoke ? She tries like she most likely saw her mother tries to instill moments of joy in their holiday. Unfortunately she is met with a lot of loneliness and rejection, she starts accepting that that’s how he is.
Goodbyes are weird, it feels like you’ll never see someone again. Sometimes that feeling becomes true. It hurts and life moves on. Before you know it Frankie is a grown woman with a family who'll never forget that gut feeling she had that time at the airport, when she waved her father goodbye, for the last time.
Every time she’ll see the ocean, every time she'll take a breath or feel that warm summer breeze on her skin, she’ll feel under pressure.
The soundtrack is an essential part of the film. Your mind dances with it. The viewer floats between Sophie sharing her angst and Callum trying to bring him down to earth. It’s a difficult position as it’s clear to us what is happening and it would be so easy to intervene and yell at them what they cannot yell at each other. The dancing scenes where Sophie of the future connects with her dad are scenes that directly connect with the viewer through the music. We understand how useless it is to want to yell at someone who’s drowning in every way. Some people feel empathy and think of someone. Some people feel seen.
Than there’s a hug.
And it might just be enough.
At the right time.
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Charlotte Wells is a Scottish director who is very autobiographical. She shows you her feelings, her nostalgia and her melancholy. Obviously, she has a completely different staring background and is relatively new to filmmakeing. Her influences are not set by the trends or by institutional schools of thoughts but they are set by her own passions, taste and vision of life. Everything looks very cheap, cause it is, Everything feels slow, cause it is. I notice a similarity in paste and emotional synergy with the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a Thai director, in the way of expressing tragedy in an incredibly subtle but pragmatic manner.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Aftersun (2022) become a modern classic.
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This piece was written by one of our film writers, Lelja. Reach her at @l.e.j.la on Instagram!
This piece was edited by one of our editors, Greg. Reach him at @Gtomaini on Instagram and Twitter!
