BEFORE: Scheduling wise, I don't think this could have worked out any better - it's not just Father's Day today, it's also the first day of summer, the solstice, so a film where a teen girl goes on a summer holiday with her father to Turkey, well, it's almost a little TOO perfect, if that could be a thing. Sure, I just programmed it here because it's a film about a father, but I'll take the other calendar connection too.
Paul Mescal carries over from "Hamnet".
THE PLOT: Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't.
AFTER: To understand this film (because the first reaction when it was done was, "Umm, so what? What was the big deal about this film two years ago?") you have to learn a little bit about the filmmaker, Charlotte Wells. Her father died when she was 16, and she took a trip with him when she was 11, much as the main character does here, and it was really the last solid amount of time they spent together before he passed. So I think we can assume here that Sophie represents Charlotte, at least as a stand-in, and we can also assume that Sophie's father passed away not too long after their vacation together. That's not IN the film, but it's implied subtext because she's looking back on the past events with a blend of nostalgia and confusion, trying to understand what took place before because there is no NOW, she no longer has a relationship with her father because he is deceased, hence all the flashbackery.
It would not have been difficult to mention at the end that this was Sophie's last trip with her father, or that he died a few years after the trip, maybe that would make things a bit too simple and would hit home for the director, possibly making the film also a little less universal, cutting back on the mass appeal. While if the ending is ambiguous or not detailed about what came later, there's a greater chance it will connect with more people who could see themselves somewhere in the pairing of Sophie and Calum Patterso. Live audience members may find it hard to relate to a dead character because they are not in fact dead themselves.
So there's a lot that the film does NOT tell us about their relationship, instead we're supposed to try and understand the small so we can extrapolate the large. They connect with each other, they joke around, they have running gags between them, they talk about a lot of different things, and they get under each other's skin. See? Very relatable, that could be any father and daughter, or father and son, you can maybe see yourself or a version of you somewhere in the mix. But this is still best described as "semi-autobiographical", so we have to dive deeper into the life of the director to figure out what the movie is NOT telling us outright. Wells has apparently discussed the father-daughter dynamic in her other films, after all.
LIke Sophie, Charlotte Wells did NOT live with her father, her parents had separated (or maybe not lived together in the first place) but she's described him as a very "involved" parent. He just couldn't continue to be involved with her mother, for some reason. She made a short film titled "Tuesday", about a 16-year old girl going to her deceased father's home and grieving his loss. She also made a short titled "Laps" about a woman who was sexually assaulted on a crowded subway train. "Aftersun" also details how Sophie's father's depression acted like a barrier between them while on holiday together - and we see Sophie making videos, and watching those videos later helped her piece together her memories of her father.
There are some confusing flash-forwards of Calum in a crowd, with light and darkness alternating maddeningly, in slow motion perhaps, so it's very difficult to determine what's going on. Later in the film, it becomes clear that we're seeing a dream that adult Sophie had about her father dancing at a rave, with strobe lights, and she's watching her father dance. But as she approaches him, and they briefly embrace, he then falls away from her, end of dream. And he is lost to her, the symbolism is finally made clear. Adult Sophie wakes up next to her wife/girlfriend, and I'm not allowed to draw a connection here between her sexual orientation - sorry, gender identity - and her complicated relationship with her father, because that would get me in a great deal of trouble, straights aren't allowed to do that. I suppose it's just easier to say that she was one way when she was 11 and kissing boys, and then she was different as an adult and found that she preferred girls.
I'm glad I read into the background of the director, because I was wondering if there was an implied sexual relationship here between Sophie and her father - in addition to scenes of him rubbing tanning lotion on her (a very normal parental thing, but hey, you never know) and then also they are forced to share a bed because the hotel screwed up their reservation, they were supposed to get a room with two beds but they did not. It seems a little off that this man shares a bed with his 11-year old daughter, even if circumstances forced it. There's one scene where he's hungover and he seems very stressed when he woke up - I'm not saying they had awkward sex together, but it is one possible interpretation, if the footage is somewhat ambiguous. I'm probably reading too much into it and finding things that are not there.
Hey, probably it's just an innocent week that a father and daughter spent in the country of Turkey two decades ago, they had some good meals, they sat in the sun, they did some karaoke (well, ONE of them did) and they did some tai chi and white person dancing. These are the times that teens need to cherish with their parents, because they never know when they could no longer be possible. Kids, even if your family vacations totally sucked (and I went on a few stinker trips with my parents, I had to sleep in a cargo van because my father was too cheap to pay for a hotel every night) you'll still have to look back on them when you're an adult and wonder how the hell you survived all the endless embarrassment.
Happy Father's Day to all the fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers and father figures out there!
Directed by Charlotte Wells
Also starring Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Sally Messham (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Brooklyn Toulson, Spike Fearn (last seen in "Alien: Romulus"), Harry Perdios, Frank Corio, Ruby Thompson, Ethan James Smith, Onur Eksioglu, Cafer Karahan, Kayleigh Ann Coleman, John Stuifzand, Typer Mutlu, Kieran Burton, Nijat Gachayev, Sarah Makharine, Erol Cengizalp.
RATING: 5 out of 10 resort staffers dancing the Macarena
