movie reviews aftersun

In the foreground, an 11-year-old girl lies asleep in bed. On the balcony beyond, seen through the plate-glass door, the girl’s father struggles to light a cigarette, hampered by the cast on his right arm. Mission accomplished, he sways back and forth rhythmically, arms moving outwards and upwards and down, a dreamy approximation of Tai Chi moves, perhaps. It’s not quite clear what is going on with him, since the camera doesn’t move in closer, and there are barriers separating us from him. This is a moment of solitude for the father, snatched at the end of the day when his child is asleep. The daughter’s deep breathing provides the rhythm for the father’s movements, and there’s something almost eerie about the moment. The 11-year-old daughter sleeps through it all.

But what is “it,” exactly?

This question lies at the shifting center of Charlotte Wells’ moving debut feature “Aftersun,” detailing a father-daughter vacation at a cheap resort in Turkey, and the scene above—which comes early on, when we’re still getting our bearings—is key. There’s something unknowable about Calum ( Paul Mescal ), and maybe this is because Sophie (Frankie Corio) is a child, and he’s her dad, and she’s just about coming to the age where she’s separating herself and becoming her own person.

There’s an uneasiness in the sequence, but the source of it is hard to place, or even name, particularly since Calum and Sophie are enjoying their vacation, overall. The occasional friction is of the normal parent-child variety, nothing too toxic, nothing too traumatic. But the depths, as they say, are sounded. The child is perceptive, and senses things, even if she can’t put it into words (although often she can). She perceives more than her father thinks she does. But children are resilient. It is possible to perceive a parent’s existential anxiety and still have a great time making a new friend at the arcade. The two things even happen simultaneously. Consciousness operates on multiple tracks and “Aftersun” understands this. The multi-level awareness is not in the dialogue, but it’s there in the film’s gentle rhythms, the editorial choices, the patience and sensitivity of Wells’ approach.

Sophie’s parents are separated, and she lives mainly with her mother. Calum talks about getting a new place, where Sophie will have her own room, and maybe starting a new business with someone named “Keith,” and from the way he talks about all this it’s obvious he barely believes in any of it. Something’s not gone right for him. Does he party too much? He became a father at a young age. There are “clues” that his life hasn’t quite worked out the way he had hoped. He has brought books on meditation and Tai Chi, suggesting not so much a lifelong practice as a way to stave off anxiety. His worries weigh him down. Sophie senses this. It’s tense when she loses her scuba mask, and she informs him she knows it’s expensive and she’s sorry. Calum is taken aback by her remark. He thought his worries were well-hidden. Calum may be a bit adrift, but he clearly loves his daughter. They have a little tiff at one point, and he apologizes to her later for his behavior. He’s a good dad. Their energy together is comfortable, intimate, familiar.

“Aftersun” is clearly told from Sophie’s point of view, but a perceptive viewer will notice there are scenes where Sophie is not present. The film, then, is from the adult Sophie’s point of view, an adult—a new parent herself—looking back on this vacation, curious about what her father must have been going through. She knows her own memories of the vacation. But what was going on with him?

Wells intersperses the vacation with surreal dream-like “rave” sequences, where an adult Sophie ( Celia Rowlson-Hall , whose 2016 directorial debut “ Ma ” I so admired and reviewed for this site) stands on a crowded dance floor, catching glimpses of her father writhing to the music in the intermittent lightning flashes of the strobe lights. She wants to get to him, touch him, hold him. Sophie is an adult now. She understands him so much better now. What would it be like if she could talk to him? They would still have so much to say to one another. In a way, “Aftersun” is an act of imaginative empathy. Sophie can now look at the things that child Sophie could not see.

This once-removed point of view, this slightly distanced stance, gives the film its melancholy melody of an almost elegiac sweetness. In the present moment, all is sunshine and laughter, Calum and Sophie having ice cream, getting mud baths, swimming, where it doesn’t matter that the resort is cheap and there’s construction going on. What matters is being together. Mescal (so wonderful in “Normal People”) gives such a tactile earthy performance, grounded in the details. There are fleeting glimpses of worry and self-loathing, his fears about not being good enough, not being a good provider or failing her … all of the things he feels he must hide—and, for the most part—does hide.

Frankie Corio is a newcomer. She’s alert, sensitive, and a totally natural presence. The dynamic between Corio and Mescal is nothing short of amazing—they are so comfortable with one another! They’re playful and thoughtful, they get joy from one another, but are capable of hurting one another too. This dynamic is a tribute to both Mescal and Corio, of course, but also a tribute to Wells’ gifts in both casting and working with actors.

Cinematographer Gregory Oke uses a soft rich palette, summery and saturated, and often keeps the frame off-center, destabilizing the point of view. Calum is often seen through a doorway, or as a reflection—in a mirror or a television screen—obscured, half-there, half not-there, similar to adult Sophie’s glimpses of him at the rave: the strobe is so violent, it’s impossible to see him in full, to perceive him as there and in the flesh. Sound designer Jovan Ajder also does fine work, particularly in a scene when Calum stalks down to the beach in the middle of the night for a swim. Calum is swallowed up by the blackness, and the gentle lapping of the waves slowly crescendos to the sound of thundering surf.

Wells’ 2015 short film “ Tuesday ” could be seen as “Aftersun” in embryo. A college student spends Tuesday nights at her dad’s, even though her mother seems against it. The girl wanders through her dad’s empty rooms, not so much snooping as touching his belongings—his guitar, one of his sweaters. He is not there. Where is he? Did he forget it was Tuesday? “Tuesday” is such a strong short film, filled with a young person’s ache to understand a man so close to her, so close and yet so far away he might as well not be there at all.

I remember the moment I realized—not just intellectually, but viscerally—how young my parents were when they had me. I was looking at a photograph of my father holding two-year-old me in his arms. He was about 26 years old at the time. I stared at his face, its youthful curves, the light in his eyes, the gentle way he held onto my hand (mainly so I wouldn’t yank his glasses off his face). I had a strange sense of time telescoping out on both ends. I thought of myself at 26 years old, how young and wild I was. It still seems unbelievable to me that he was that young. He was such a good dad. I would love to ask him about his life. I would love to ask him what it all was like for him. “Aftersun” is Wells’ beautiful attempt to do the same.

Now playing in theaters.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O’Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master’s in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

Paul Mescal as Calum
Celia Rowlson-Hall as Adult Sophie
Sally Messham as Melinda
Ayse Parlak as Teen Girl 1
Francesca Corio as Sophie
Sophia Lamanova as Teen Girl 2
Brooklyn Toulson as Michael
Spike Fearn as Olly
Blair McClendon
Charlotte Wells

Cinematographer

Gregory Oke
Oliver Coates

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‘Aftersun’ Review: A Father and Time

A daughter’s memory of a vacation in Turkey is at the heart of Charlotte Wells’s astonishing and devastating debut feature.

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By A.O. Scott

The relationship between a parent and a child is wired for heartbreak — a primal attachment headed for an inevitable double grief. Kids grow up and flee the nest. Parents die. It’s the natural order of things, calamitous even when no untimely tragedies intervene to amplify the pain.

Such a tragedy does shadow “Aftersun,” the tender and devastating first feature from the 35-year-old Scottish director Charlotte Wells, but the power of the film comes from its embrace of the basic and universal fact of loss. It’s about a mostly happy experience — a father-daughter vacation in a resort town on the Turkish coast, with snorkeling excursions, hotel buffets and lazy hours by the pool — that ends in tears. Your tears.

Eleven-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her father, Calum ( Paul Mescal ), are mostly too caught up in the delights and frustrations of the present to express much sorrow or anxiety, but they also seem aware that time is moving quickly. Sophie, on the edge of adolescence, is both hanging onto childhood and rushing toward maturity. Her eyes are always moving, scanning her surroundings for clues and portents.

A young man himself — he’s about to turn 31 and is mistaken by a fellow tourist for Sophie’s older brother — Calum carries some weariness in his lithe frame. His boyish features are creased with worry. We don’t learn much about his history — Wells is not the kind of director to spoil delicate scenes with expository dialogue — but we’re aware that he and Sophie’s mother aren’t together. We can also infer some hard knocks and bad decisions in his past.

Maybe in his future as well. One thing we do know about Calum — though it’s hard to say exactly how we come by this knowledge — is that he dies sometime after the vacation. From the very first scenes, the presence of camcorders and the absence of smartphones places the trip in the past. A grown-up Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall), who at 31 has a partner and a baby, is remembering those sun-dappled mornings and karaoke nights (she sang “Losing My Religion” ) of 20 years before.

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'Aftersun' review: This is the best film of the year by a first time writer-director

"Aftersun" debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and left a lasting impression.

Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio are seen in a still image taken from the official trailer of "Aftersun," only in theaters Oct. 21.

I've been thinking about "Aftersun" since its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Now it's in theaters where no excuses will be accepted for you missing it. This is the best film of the year by a first time writer-director.

The Scottish newbie is Charlotte Wells, 35, and her debut is a cause for celebration. Don't expect sexual shocks or show-off effects. For Wells, the territory of the human heart is all she needs to keep us smiling, nodding in recognition and then fighting back tears.

"Aftersun" is a father-daughter story, based on Wells' life as a young girl on vacation with her dad. The time is the late 1990s when the Walkman and karaoke held sway. The place is a budget beach resort in Turkey far from Scotland where dad left her and mom to live in London.

Looking to spend time with each other, 11-year-old Sophie (knockout newcomer Frankie Corio) and her father Calum (Paul Mescal) make memories with a camcorder that the grown and queer Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall), now a parent, reflects on with sweetness and regret.

Delicate business is being transacted in this place where meaning is found in exchanged looks and the space between words. Wells can distill a life in the way an agonized Calum -- with a cast on his forearm -- smokes silently on a balcony while his daughter sleeps or pretends to.

MORE: Review: 'Anatomy of a Scandal' features exhilirating performances

Wells suggests that Calum is now dead and Sophie, in a ghostly dance, is using her childhood memories to make sense of her father in her own adulthood. That's a tall order that Wells executes with powers of observation that filmmakers twice her age might envy.

There's the sight of Sophie negotiating the treacherous turning point between childhood and adolescence. Or Calum dancing alone, lost in a strobe-lit club. As dad tells daughter, "There's this feeling, once you leave where you're from, that you don't totally belong there again."

Sophie feels a sense of abandonment magnified later when Calum, a slave to his quicksilver moods, sends her on stage by herself to do a karaoke version of "Losing My Religion" that they had planned as a duet. Wells doesn't give us details, only the sorrow eating at this young father as he vainly tries to keep the best side of himself alive for Sophie.

This would be a good time to extol the brilliant, breathtaking, soul-deep performances of Mescal and Corio that represent acting at its truest and finest. Corio was cast after a Facebook call for unknowns. And what a genuine find she is.

MORE: Review: 'The Woman King is indelible and truly inspiring

The Irish Mescal, 26, who earned an Emmy nomination and sex symbol status opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones on Hulu's "Normal People," is an extraordinary actor, as witness to his excellence even in smaller roles in "God's Country" and "The Lost Daughter." In "Aftersun," he fills a complex role with disarming charm and elemental power.

The empathy that Wells and her actors invest in these characters gives "Aftersun" the capability to sneak up and floor you. Is the film too small for awards attention? Hardly. Last year, the mesmerizing miniature that was "CODA" took home the Best Picture Oscar.

One thing is for sure: you won't be able to get "Aftersun" out of your head and heart.

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‘Aftersun’ Review: Paul Mescal’s Charisma Powers a Summer Vacation Portrait That Isn’t as Sunny as It Seems

Produced by Barry Jenkins, this striking debut from British writer-director Charlotte Wells finds rueful undercurrents in a tender father-daughter bond.

By Guy Lodge

Film Critic

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Among the more crisp, confident first films to emerge from the British independent scene in of late, “Aftersun” confirms the sly, angular promise of Wells’ shorts, which put the Scotswoman on the map at such festivals as Sundance and South By Southwest — and secured her some enviable collaborators for her shift into features, with Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski, no less, among the film’s producers. Their involvement will significantly boost the international profile of this modestly scaled Cannes Critics’ Week premiere, as will the presence of Irish star Paul Mescal — fresh from a BAFTA win for his breakout turn in TV’s “Normal People,” and here proving himself a compelling big-screen presence, probing an anxious, uneasy flipside to his casual, laddish charm.

That lends an additional urgency to the trip Calum has booked for them at a family-oriented Mediterranean resort populated almost entirely with braying, sunburned Brits: As a rare period of sustained father-daughter time, it’s a chance for both Calum and Sophie to prove themselves to each other, showing off their responsibilities and capabilities, respectively. And for the most part, they have a good time, whether sunbathing together, shooting pool, sharing a laugh at the cheesy in-house entertainment or playing around with a camcorder that occasionally, accidentally captures Calum in more morose repose. Wells’ taut script tells us little of his life outside the immediate present, but stray asides and moments of solitary rumination — a fretful cigarette on the balcony when he thinks his daughter is asleep, a longing fixation on a Persian rug at a local market — hint at nagging unhappiness beneath the surface, as do furrows of worry and unrest at the corners of Mescal’s otherwise bluff performance.

Perceptive if not overly precocious, Sophie notices some of her dad’s mood shifts, but is distracted with growing pains of her own. Boys are showing an interest in her for the first time, while she’s developing the halting self-consciousness of any kid crashing into adolescence, putting away some childish things but not others, to dissonant effect. With both father and daughter privately facing their own fears of getting older, there’s a sense that they may never share this innocent, breezy ease with each other again. “Aftersun” thus works elegantly as a kind of dual coming-of-age study, perfectly served by Mescal’s signature brand of softboi gentleness — here shown maturing and creasing into more hardened, troubled masculinity — and the vitality of Corio, whose deft, lovely performance braids both authentic exuberance and a girlishness that feels more performed, as if for the benefit of her dad. In one extraordinary scene, her insecurities seep out during a brave-faced karaoke rendition of, of all songs, R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” — three minutes that appear to age her by three years.

It’s one of several ’90s British radio standards that fill the soundtrack of “Aftersun,” from the rasping indie rock of Blur and Catatonia to the caramel pop groove of All Saints. Yet there’s more to the film’s balmy summer-of-’99 setting (immaculately evoked by Gregory Oke’s primary-colored, faintly sun-bleached lensing, as well as canny production and costume design) than empty remember-this nostalgia. Temporal glitches and brief, non-specific flashbacks keep breaking into the vacation time, as Wells and editor Blair McClendon obliquely loop proceedings both back to Calum’s more carefree salad days, and forward to Sophie’s own edge-of-30 adulthood, drawing a wavy, hazy line between the anguish of father and daughter.

Reviewed at British Film Institute, London, May 11, 2022. (In Cannes Film Festival — Critics' Week.) Running time: 101 MIN.

Production: (U.K.-U.S.) An A24 release of a BBC Film, British Film Institute, Creative Scotland presentation in association with Tango of a Pastel, Unified Theory production. (World sales, Charades, Paris.) Producers: Adele Romanski, Amy Jackson, Barry Jenkins, Mark Ceryak. Executive producers: Eva Yates, Lizzie Francke, Kieran Hannigan, Tim Headington, Lia Buman.
Crew: Director, screenplay: Charlotte Wells. Camera: Gregory Oke. Editor: Blair McClendon. Music: Oliver Coates.
With: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall.

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Review: ‘Aftersun,’ one of the year’s great debut films, is a piercing father-daughter story

Man with a broken wrist with his arm around his daughter

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Something odd happened to me during a recent press screening of “Aftersun,” a beautifully sculpted and quietly shattering first feature from the Scottish writer-director Charlotte Wells. While jotting down a few stray thoughts and details, I turned a page in my notebook and came across a drawing, something my 6-year-old daughter had doodled in bright-orange crayon. That wasn’t odd in and of itself; notebooks get passed around our house like potato-chip bags. But it was the first time the discovery of her handiwork, usually a cute and funny mid-screening distraction, had the effect of nudging me closer to the two characters in front of me — who, it may not surprise you to learn, are a girl and her father.

My apologies for the indulgent personal intro, something I’ve allowed myself only because the process of picking through one’s personal baggage — including the scribbled notes and stray memorabilia our loved ones leave for us — feels entirely germane to what Wells herself is doing. “Aftersun,” opening in theaters after an acclaimed festival run that began at Cannes this year, is what the director calls an “emotionally autobiographical” work, inspired by her recollections of a summer vacation she and her father took together in the ’90s. It’s a memory piece and, as such, a rumination on the ways in which memories can be at once indelible and imprecise, how they can torment us and fail us and still be the most precious things — maybe even the only things — we have left.

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From the opening moments, rendered in the grainy textures of camcorder footage, Wells makes explicit the patient, methodical act of sifting and sorting, of peering with intense concentration into the past. But then the past comes suddenly into focus with a shimmering, almost hyperreal clarity. The sun blazes down on the pools and deck chairs of a budget resort in Turkey, where 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her thirtysomething single dad, Calum (Paul Mescal), have come for a late-summer holiday. The hotel isn’t much — the tackiness of the lobby furniture, speaking of memories, will emblazon itself on your retina — but Sophie and Calum take most of their setbacks and letdowns in stride. They have the easy adaptability of two people who are pleasant and undemanding by nature and, it soon becomes clear, a little disoriented in each other’s company.

A man and a girl do a dance in a field with low mountains in the background

Sophie lives with her mother (never seen) in Scotland; Calum makes his home in England. This Mediterranean getaway is thus a rare attempt to make up for lost time, though it also carries the unmistakable feel of a farewell. That impression may well be deceptive; the future of Sophie and Calum’s relationship, if they have one, is left unexplored. But something is clearly slipping away here, most obviously Sophie’s childhood, which you can all but see vanishing into the maw of early adolescence. It isn’t just the attention she attracts from boys at the hotel or the mix of fascination, envy and faint skepticism with which she regards the teenage couple making out poolside. It’s that her entire way of seeing her young, emotionally and geographically distant father until now — as an erratic but benevolent presence, more goofy older-brother figure than paternal authority — is about to change and possibly vanish.

Corio, an amazing discovery, somehow conveys these and countless other pinprick impressions without putting any of them into words. There’s a startling translucence to her performance, a willingness to let emotions bleed through gently and unforcedly, that matches the unhurried grace and circumspection of the filmmaking. Much of the story’s meaning can be divined simply from the interplay of Gregory Oke’s cinematography and Blair McClendon’s editing, the way the movie cuts between and around Calum and Sophie mid-conversation, insistently framing and reframing the scene in a way that suggests the workings of memory itself. At times the off-center compositions, resort setting and exquisitely detailed sound design — every splash of pool water and hiss of Turkish bath steam registers with crystal clarity — reminded me of Lucrecia Martel’s coming-of-age drama “The Holy Girl,” with its skill at conveying psychological interiority through atmosphere.

Like Martel, Wells knows the power of narrative elision: “Aftersun” may be a feature-length flashback, but apart from a few lyrical framing elements, its story unfolds in a spare, self-contained present tense. Apart from a friendly, mostly inaudible phone call from Calum to Sophie’s mom, we learn nothing of their long-ago relationship. And we glean only vague details about the recent accident that shattered Calum’s wrist, save for the sight of his forearm in a cast — an image of little dramatic significance but enormous metaphorical weight. A mantle of sadness hangs over Calum, even with the warmth of his sweet, boyish smile and the vigor coursing through his frame.

The restrained but intense physicality of Mescal’s performance finds intermittent release when Calum practices his tai chi moves or, in a sudden surrender of inhibitions, goes wild on the dance floor. But the actor, as distinct here as he was in his recent supporting turns in “The Lost Daughter” and “God’s Creatures,” can hint at a deep, inchoate anguish with an image as simple as Calum having a restless smoke on the balcony while Sophie sleeps. For all his easygoing vibes, he also tends to shut down without warning, invariably when Sophie needs him most, and to feel a guilt afterward that’s all the more terrible because of her quickness to forgive. A scene in which Calum leaves Sophie to stumble her way through a solo karaoke performance seems to distill everything — adolescent awkwardness, parental abandonment, a chasm that seems to be widening in every direction.

The song Sophie’s singing in that moment is R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” one of several ’90s hits swirling through a movie with an unerring musical ear for its moment. (The moody Britpop of Blur’s “Tender” marks that moment as 1999; the Macarena craze is still in full swing.) But if Wells has assembled a note-perfect evocation of a highly specific chapter — the end of a millennium and possibly something else — it’s when she deliberately breaks with realism that this gently aching movie achieves an overwhelming emotional force.

At times she briefly flashes forward, showing us an older Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) in her own early stages of parenthood. At times she shows us the accumulated relics of that long-ago holiday — an ornately woven rug, a faded Polaroid, a postcard message as achingly sincere as it is crushingly inadequate. And finally she gives us, in astonishing bursts of strobe-lit abstraction, the recurring image of Calum dancing in a faraway nightclub, lost in himself and perhaps lost to her forever. There’s mystery in this image, but also revelation and, astonishingly, recognition. As Wells has noted, “Aftersun” isn’t exactly her story, and glancing personal associations aside, it isn’t yours or mine either. And yet in these moments, for reasons as tough to articulate as they are to shake off, it feels ineffably, unmistakably ours.

Rated: R, for some language and brief sexual material Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes Playing: Starts Oct. 21 at AMC Burbank 16; AMC Century City 15

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'Aftersun' review: This is the best film of the year by a first time writer-director

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One thing is for sure: you won't be able to get "Aftersun" out of your head and heart.

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Aftersun Reviews

Wells seeks to capture the nostalgia and dilemmas of everyday life over a fixed discourse on the loss of innocence and paternal sacrifices, but his narrative remains situated in common places where the emotional hook is absent. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Sep 15, 2024

Poignant and anchored by Mescal and Corio’s terrific performances, Aftersun is an outstanding debut from Charlotte Wells that quickly confirms her directing talents.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 25, 2024

Its striking imagery evokes both the power of memory and its obscurities through the ingenious use of analog video and purposeful audio/visual distortions.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2024

Aftersun is a sad and beautiful exploration of grief, of Sophie's struggle to reconcile complex and conflicting feelings about her father, and her struggle to forgive his decision, and perhaps to forgive herself.

Full Review | Dec 29, 2023

Charlotte Wells’ stunning debut is a quiet rumination of the lost daughter.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2023

Charlotte Wells’ picture-perfect debut visually epitomizes the heart-wrenching processes of memory.

Director Charlotte Wells gives us one of the most piercing debuts in recent memory with this intimate dad-daughter relationship drama.

Full Review | Sep 12, 2023

Shimmering like a mirage that retreats and dematerializes the closer one gets, Aftersun may just be the best movie of 2022.

Full Review | Jul 27, 2023

Aftersun is so interesting in the way it explores the reality of parents that they keep their children in the dark about.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Aftersun is left open-ended, and that’s a perfect conclusion to this portrait of a father and daughter relationship. It speaks to the inability of a child to truly understand their parents, no matter how valiantly they try.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

'Aftersun' depicts an unvarnished portrait of a young man grappling with responsibilities, struggling to hold on to his own life while willingly shouldering responsibility of another.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2023

Aftersun is a tour de force for its two leads, a phenomenal child performance from Frankie Corio with Paul Mescal cementing himself as one of the best actors of his generation and showcasing incredible range

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 19, 2023

In addition, there’s a dark side to all of this; you begin to remember the darkest of memories – the ones you try to avoid...

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jul 19, 2023

The Scottish director is not only beautifully attuned to the most minor nuances of human sensitivities, but also capable of translating this natural inclination through a refined command over form.

Full Review | Original Score: 5 | Apr 25, 2023

Without being an overtly dramatic or narrative lesson, Aftersun sticks a finger into the wound and digs into the most intimate to devastating effect. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Apr 4, 2023

The film is small, discreet, intimate, a little coy—at times, a bit self-involved and inward-turning. The somewhat self-conscious insistence on the lack of great drama can be tedious at times.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2023

The easy pace of Wells’s direction brings out the best in her central performers, and the chemistry between Mescal and Corio plays out effortlessly. The light moments between them are warm and the darker ones linger heavily.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 21, 2023

A quiet, emotionally unmooring portrait of father and daughter in moments of blissful silliness and small confessions... it’s a devastatingly honest rendition of the aftershocks of a parent’s love when we realise, too late, the simple joys we shared.

Full Review | Original Score: 5 | Mar 20, 2023

Wells shows how interactions that were solid within their own moment become more ambiguous as time has gone by and the adult understanding of Sophie has grown.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 17, 2023

Charlotte Wells’s self-assured debut takes pains to be specific to its time and place.

Full Review | Mar 16, 2023

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‘Aftersun’ Review: Paul Mescal Is a Movie Dad for the Ages in Charlotte Wells’ Staggeringly Beautiful Debut

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival. A24 releases the film in theaters on Friday, October 21.

A stunning debut that develops with the gradual poignancy of a Polaroid, Charlotte Wells ’ “ Aftersun ” isn’t just an honest movie about the way that we remember the people we’ve lost — fragmented, elusive, nowhere and everywhere all at once — it’s also a heart-stopping act of remembering unto itself. Here, in the span of an oblique but tender story that feels small enough to fit on an instant photo (or squeeze into the LCD screen of an old camcorder), Wells creates a film that gradually echoes far beyond its frames. By the time it reaches fever pitch with the greatest Freddie Mercury needle drop this side of “Wayne’s World,” “Aftersun” has begun to shudder with the crushing weight of all that we can’t leave behind, and all that we may not have known to take with us in the first place.

When Sophie (remarkable newcomer Frankie Corio , real as can be) thinks of her father, she thinks of the Turkish holiday they went on together in the late ’90s. That was the trip when she turned 11, and Calum — played by “Normal People” breakout Paul Mescal , who makes a premature leap into dad roles with tremendous poise and a triggering sense of parental mystery — turned 32. Some kids at their rundown hotel assumed they were siblings, and now they would be about the same age.

As an adult who we only see in glimpses, Sophie rewatches the MiniDV footage that she and Calum recorded on that vacation, eagerly scanning the standard-definition video in search of the clues that a child might have missed. Clues to what? It doesn’t matter.

The eerily objective home videos and the semi-imagined 35mm scenes that “Aftersun” wraps around them both suggest that Calum was struggling with a demon of one stripe or another, and that he was doing his best to hide that struggle from his daughter during their too-rare time together, but Wells denies us the details. Like Sophie, all we can do is sift for meaning amidst the rubble and hope to fill in the haunted spaces between the man she knew and the man she lost.

We tend to think of memories as crystallized moments of time, loosely strung together along the trellises of a drooping chandelier somewhere deep within our mind. And yet, personal experience tells us that our pasts are composed from an infinite swirl of different sources — real and invented — each of them crudely sewn together with the same desperation that our sleeping brains might arrange a billion random neurons into a semi-coherent dream.

Some of those sources are soft as ghosts, and likewise change shape in the shadows. Others are much harder, as still and tactile as a rug on the floor. Both can be evocative, but neither are enough to connect all the dots; not when you’re trying to re-trace someone you loved from the vague silhouette they left behind.

All these years later — an entire lifetime since the tan she got in Turkey faded back into freckled white — Sophie has only grown more desperate to see what the home videos from that trip will never show her. As if by osmosis, we intuit that she’s haunted by the feeling that some ineffable part of herself will always remain just out of reach, like the patch of skin between her boney pre-teen shoulders where Calum had to apply the sunscreen for her. We sense that she re-watches the camcorder footage in the desperate, keening hope that her dad might be able to show it to her in time to save her from it. And we sense that she does this because she never saw him again.

Wells’ ingenious construction allows “Aftersun” to unfold from a dual perspective that seems to filter it through the eyes of an adult and a child at the same time. We look for discrepancies, scanning the screen for answers to questions that we don’t even know to ask yet until even the film’s most banal images seem rife with secrets. Wells’ camera sometimes lingers on her characters during the kind of private moments when they suppose no one can see them, as if the film itself is goading us into assuming the worst. Gregory Oke’s fuzzy and tactile cinematography suggests a more sensitive read, its gossamer textures recalling the work of Lance Acord in a movie that often feels like a platonic riff on “Lost in Translation.”

Calum has a cast on his arm, but claims that he doesn’t remember how he hurt it. He calls Sophie “poppett,” and talks to his daughter with a guarded intimacy that makes it hard to say if he’s trying to keep her safe from the world or protect her from himself. Calum smokes on the balcony of their hotel room after she falls asleep, standing on the other side of a glass screen door. Sometimes he practices tai chi when he’s in the room by himself, his body obscured from the camera by a bathroom wall. At one point we see him spit at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Is this what he was doing when Sophie was out making silly little videos on her dad’s camera?

Sometimes Sophie wears a “NO FEAR” hat, just one of the many impeccable period details in a film so precise about its point in time that it seems to take place at the exact moment when the “Macarena” was transitioning from “best part of the party” to “begrudging obligation” (a cringe-inducing karaoke scene in the second half of the movie is set to a period-appropriate track too perfect to spoil). Sophie plays with a group of older kids she meets at the pool and clearly delights in the thrilling autonomy of doing older kid stuff, but she’s never the least bit disinterested in hanging out with her dad.

There’s so much about Calum that she’s desperate to understand without asking, so we hang onto his every word in much the same way. We eavesdrop on his phone call with Sophie’s mother in order to figure out that they’re separated but on sweet terms, we listen as he talks (flirts?) with a scuba instructor, and we dissect the tone of his voice when he talks about “the pretty teacher” at Sophie’s school to hear if that sounds as honest.

Sophie jumps at the rare moments when Calum reveals himself to her, filing away precious bits of information for later that week, unaware that she’ll be holding on to them for decades longer. A pained confession about forgotten birthdays pays off several times over, leading to an indelible fade-out that crystallizes how this immensely powerful movie sneaks up on you in plain sight.

Some of that power can be credited to the masterstroke of how Wells ties her story together — “Aftersun” arriving at a sublime ending that exists in a liminal space between memory and imagination that every viewer will have to locate for themselves — but none of it would be possible without the real and instant sense of intimacy that she helps create between her two lead actors. Hardly a single moment feels didactic or instructive or reverse-engineered from the movie that Sophie might want to make about this trip one day; even after watching “Aftersun” four times, I’m still not sure if time will help Sophie come to a better understanding of who her dad was, or if their holiday was the last age when they could possibly have been as honest with each other as they were.

Wells’ film is able to follow its characters through the strobe light of lost time because Mescal and Corio make it so tempting for us to complete their performances for them — to fill in the gaps with the same urgency that we might want to close our own. Few movies have ever ended with a more tempting invitation to do something impossible, but “Aftersun” is so unforgettable because of the agonizing beauty it finds in the futile act of trying.

I often think of the wonderful scene in which Sophie tries to interview Calum on camera, only for her dad to clam up and make her shut it off. “Fine,” she says, “I’ll just record it in my little mind camera.” She doesn’t know it at the time, but it’s a lens she’ll be looking through for the rest of her life; it’s where we look for the people we love when there’s nowhere else to find them.

“Aftersun” premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, and was reviewed from the 2022 Telluride Film Festival. A24 will release it in theaters on Friday, October 21.

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Aftersun review: An astounding first feature that captures Paul Mescal at his most heart-wrenching

Scottish filmmaker charlotte wells has made a movie that feels as if it’s teetering on the edge of a cliff, article bookmarked.

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It’s difficult to think of the moments before a heartbreak and not lace them with omens. The mind, too often, moulds memories into prophecies. Colours get dialled up. Emotions solidify. It’s a hard thing to talk about, let alone visualise. That’s why Aftersun , the debut of Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells, is so astounding. She’s captured the uncapturable, finding the words and images to describe a feeling that always seems to sit just beyond our comprehension.

The only way to understand memory, in any meaningful way, is perhaps on personal terms. And here, Wells has siphoned some element of autobiography into a story of her own precise crafting. Eleven-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) is on holiday with her dad, Calum ( Paul Mescal ), at a point in the Nineties when the Macarena was at its cultural apex. It’s made clear that Calum isn’t with Sophie’s mother any more. He moved to England; they stayed in Scotland. This trip to Turkey, which Calum can barely afford, is a rare opportunity for father and daughter to be together.

Except we’re not watching these events as they were, but as they’re remembered – by an older Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) under the strobe lights of a nightclub or a rave or, really, the chaotic confines of her own brain. We also see her play and replay an old VHS tape from the trip, trying to pinpoint some hidden truth that Aftersun , in a masterstroke move, never reveals. But this shared time between Sophie and Calum marked the end of… something. That much we know.

At one point, you can see the ghostly imprint of an adult Sophie in the television screen’s reflection. What terrible thing haunts her? Wells’s camera draws us gently towards the telltale signs of self-discovery. Sophie’s trip, on its surface, signalled the dwindling days of childhood naivety. Her fingers brush up against a boy’s at an arcade. She spies, through a bathroom keyhole, the gestures of an older girl as she details to her friends the handjob she gave the night before. Kids drift across each other’s paths, at pools and at play areas, finding a strange solidarity in the ritualistic nature of the package holiday.

Corio, here, movingly captures mute desperation. She shrinks down. She smiles small. It’s the hesitancy of a child who wants to show her dad that she loves him, but doesn’t quite know how. Wells draws a painful irony from the way Sophie is always in the act of documentation, snapping Polaroid photos and videoing Calum while she quizzes him. When he tells her he doesn’t want to be filmed, she says she’ll “record it in my little mind-camera” instead. But all the video footage in the world can’t give her the answers she needs. All we have to lean on is Calum’s offhand yet portentous remarks to other characters.

The Menu review: Scattershot satire, but Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy are bliss

For all that Aftersun can be described as gentle, contemplative and even beautiful, it’s also the kind of film that feels as if it’s teetering on the edge of a cliff. Mescal’s Calum bears the same kind of broken-down charm of his Connell in Normal People , but there are moments of sudden detachment that feel especially heart-wrenching. If only Sophie could grab that head of his and shake it until all the secrets fell out. What is it, Calum? Where has your soul been bruised? Aftersun doesn’t let us know. It doesn’t let Sophie know, either. It leaves behind a deep feeling of want, and it’s one of the most powerful emotions you’ll find in any cinema this year.

Dir: Charlotte Wells. Starring: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall. 12A, 101 minutes.

‘Aftersun’ is in cinemas from 18 November

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‘Aftersun’ Review: A Father, a Daughter, and Things Left Unsaid

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Paul mescal in ‘aftersun’: film review | cannes 2022.

The ‘Normal People’ star toplines a debut feature as a young Scottish father on summer holiday with his tween daughter.

By Sheri Linden

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Full credits

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Critics’ Week) Production companies: BBC Film, BFI, Screen Scotland, Tango, Pastel, Unified Theory Cast: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Brooklyn Toulson, Sally Messham Director-screenwriter: Charlotte Wells Producers: Adele Romanski, Amy Jackson, Barry Jenkins, Mark Ceryak Executive producers: Eva Yates, Lizzie Francke, Kieran Hannigan, Tim Headington, Lia Buman Director of photography: Gregory Oke Production designer: Billur Turan Costume designer: Frank Gallacher Editor: Blair McClendon Music: Oliver Coates Casting: Lucy Pardee Sound design: Jovan Ajder Sales: Charades

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Aftersun (II) (2022)

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‘Aftersun’ review: Paul Mescal hits new heights in the best British movie this year

His latest is a moody, melancholic rumination on parenthood and the passage of time

W hat happens when you become a father before you’re really ready? That’s one question bubbling away underneath Aftersun , the distinct debut from Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells, starring Normal People ’s Paul Mescal. He plays Calum, who is trying to connect with his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) when they go on holiday to a Turkish resort. No longer with Sophie’s mother, he’s barely out of his twenties. “Can’t see myself being 40,” he remarks. “Surprised I made it to 30.”

Read more: Aftersun ending explained: breaking down one of the year’s best film scenes

It’s the mid-’90s, although time is very elastic in Aftersun . As Sophie mucks around in the amusement arcades in their resort, flashbacks to Calum’s own hedonistic youth (which coincided with the rave explosion) slip into the film. Meanwhile, wrapping around this are scenes of an adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) sifting through old home video footage of their break in Turkey, reflecting on her relationship with her oft-absent father.

Despite an underlying melancholia, Calum’s aiming for self-improvement as he gets older. In his luggage are books on Tai Chi and meditation. And for all their differences, he and Sophie communicate. She tells him about kissing Michael, a boy she meets on the holiday, and Calum encourages her to speak to him about anything. Even when it comes to drugs. “I’ve done it all and you can too,” he says, in what might be either be very modern parenting or a disaster waiting to happen.

Just as in any family, there are issues lurking beneath the surface. In the film’s most awkward scene, Sophie sings R.E.M. ’s ‘Losing My Religion’ in a karaoke bar at the resort; Calum refuses to join her, then offers to pay for her to have singing lessons when they get back home. Don’t make the offer if you don’t have the money, she replies – clearly stung in the past by broken promises. Guilt, on Calum’s side, slides around this story like a squirt of suncream.

While Mescal and newcomer Corio forge a tight bond on screen – they even get mud baths, in what might be the cutest father-daughter moment this year – it’s the way Wells depicts conversations that really leaves the strongest impression. One sequence, as they talk while sitting on the hotel bed, plays out entirely with the camera trained on the switched-off screen of the room’s TV, reflecting their image in the blackness of the tube.

It’s moments like these that create the film’s intense intimacy, exactly as Wells intended – as if we’re sneaking a look at some discarded home movie footage. Similarly dreamy is the soundtrack, with ’90s tracks flooding our ears ( All Saints ’ ‘Never Ever’, Chumbawamba ’s ‘Tubthumping’ and Catatonia ’s ‘Road Rage’ all get an airing). Best of all, Blur ’s ‘Tender’ – a song whose title rather sums up the feelings Aftersun evokes – arrives, warped and woozy in a distorted version.

The Gorgeous Melancholy of Aftersun

Calum is a young dad, young enough that when he’s out with 11-year-old Sophie (Francesca Corio), people assume that they’re siblings rather than a parent and child. Someone makes this mistake not long into Aftersun , and you half expect Calum to let it pass uncommented on, or to be embarrassed when he has to explain the truth. He is, after all, played by the irresistible Paul Mescal, prince of the charming, unreliable heartthrobs, and with his rumpled looks and empty pockets, he comes across as someone more at home carousing with his boys at the bar than periodically reapplying sunscreen to his daughter’s back to ensure that she doesn’t burn. And yet Calum, for all the other ways that things have not been working out the way he planned, is proud to announce that he’s Sophie’s father, and proud to be taking her on a vacation he can’t really afford to a discount beach resort in Turkey. Aftersun , the debut from Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells, is a dual portrait of a girl on the cusp of adolescence and a young man feeling adrift in adulthood, and it’s a work of masterful and almost unbearable melancholy.

It’s one of the best movies of the year, though it damn well makes you work for it, with Wells taking such a deliberately oblique approach to her premise that it at first comes across more as an affectation than as subtlety. Aftersun is made up almost entirely of the trip in question, which, we soon grasp, took place two decades ago, though it’s pointedly only Sophie, played as an adult by Celia Rowlson-Hall, who we get to see in flashes in the present day. It’s frequently Sophie who’s shooting the crummy digital video footage we periodically cut to, the lower resolution and artifacting as much a signpost of the era as the soundtrack, which is littered with late ‘90s detritus from the Lightning Seeds, Catatonia, and Aqua. She and Calum — who broke up with her mother years ago — turn the camera to the sun and the pool, but more often they point it at one another, and in the opening shot Sophie has trained the lens on her father in order to interview him, asking him if this is what he imagined he’d be doing when he was her age.

She doesn’t seem to realize how this question devastates him, though it becomes clear when the film returns to this moment later and shows it from the outside. Calum’s planned this holiday over his 31st birthday, which may not be a major milestone, but for someone who jokes about being surprised he made it to 30, represents a panicky forward trudge of time with little to show for it aside from the funny, self-assured daughter he doesn’t get to see much. But Calum’s depression remains an only half-glimpsed mystery, the shots of him reflected in a television screen and a coffee table surface serving as visual reminders of his elusive nature. There comes a moment when you start to actually comprehend your parents as people separate from yourself, ones whose lives stretched long before your arrival and contain vast unseen realms. Sophie, who’s played with such unaffected ease by Corio that she doesn’t seem to be acting at all, may not be there yet, not any more than she is one of the teenagers she hangs out with one evening. But she’s close enough to sense what she doesn’t yet know, in the same way that she playacts romance with a boy from the arcade after watching the older kids canoodle, the two sharing an tentative open-eyed kiss.

Tiny details like that have submerged but seismic resonances throughout Aftersun . That experimental peck is the start of years of exploration that will lead to Sophie, at 31 herself, to be in a relationship with a woman with whom she has a baby. A stack of books about meditation and tai chi are indications of Calum’s search for meaning. Calum left Scotland, where Sophie lives with her mother, for a life drifting around London, and when she asks him if he’ll ever move back, he gives her an answer that doubles as a description of his psychic state: “There’s this feeling, once you leave where you’re from, that you don’t totally belong there again.” In the closest this delicate film has to a pivotal sequence, Sophie puts their names on a list to sing karaoke in what’s clearly been a tradition for them before, though this time Calum’s not in the mood, and so Sophie goes up alone, her bravado fading as she slogs her solitary way through a rendition of “Losing My Religion.” Throughout Aftersun , Mescal is a marvel of boyish fun masking a deep streak of self-loathing he tries mightily to hide from his daughter, but in that sequence, as Sophie stands there discovering insecurity in real time, he’s easy to hate.

Neither could articulate why they’re so upset, though the night spirals from there, Calum leaving his daughter and getting drunk in an abdication of parental duties he’s otherwise proven himself devoted to. Aftersun isn’t a recreation of a memory, though the act of remembering is obviously at its core. Rather, it’s about trying to square the intimacy of being cared for as a child with the perspective that comes with being an adult. It’s about wanting to reach across time, and to meet a loved one in an impossible space where, for once, you’re both on the same level, and you can finally understand them for who they are — or who they were.

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Entertainment

Aftersun review: a tender, heart-wrenching memory piece

Frankie Corio sits on a couch with a sleeping Paul Mescal in A24's Aftersun.

“Anchored by a stunning lead performance from Paul Mescal, Aftersun is one of the year's most moving and unique movies.”

Charlotte Wells' gentle, observant visual style
Paul Mescal's performance
An unforgettable final 5 minutes
An overly languid pace
A meandering second act

Charlotte Wells’ directorial debut, Aftersun , is an open-hearted, tender piece of filmmaking. It crackles and vibrates with the same kind of lived-in intimacy that has defined the works of filmmakers like Richard Linklater and Terence Malick. Like those two auteurs, Wells has an ability to turn silence into its own special effect, one that makes you lean in further and feel as if you can smell the same musty air as the characters you’re watching on-screen.

A tale of memory and loss

The film contains one of the best performances of the year, a slow burn movie that is worth your time (and patience).

There are many moments like that in Aftersun , a film that isn’t afraid to let its characters pause, breathe, and observe the world around them. Rather than detach in these brief minutes of respite, don’t be surprised if you feel yourself sinking further into the film’s meditative mood.

But there’s something else lurking beneath the surface of Aftersun . Underneath the film’s moments of joy, sadness, and togetherness, there is a yearning. It’s present in Aftersun ’s opening scene, which introduces a young father, Calum (Paul Mescal), as he dances around a hotel room and avoids answering the personal questions his daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio), is asking him from behind her video camera. We watch Calum through the lens of Sophie’s digital camcorder, but it’s only when the recording comes to an end that we realize we’re not the only ones doing so.

As the recording freezes on Calum’s blurred face, a reflection suddenly forms over the entire image. In quick succession, we realize not only that the recording itself has been playing on a TV the whole time, but that it was this previously unseen figure who turned it on in the first place. In terms of visual tricks, this opening moment in Aftersun is one of the best of the year, and it establishes Wells’ ability to imbue even the most minute of details with stunning levels of emotional significance. It is, in other words, the perfect opening note for Aftersun , a film that creates massive ripples of emotion out of the smallest pebbles.

Over the course of Aftersun ’s 101-minute runtime, the details of its story gradually become clear. Slowly, we realize that the reflection in the film’s opening scene belongs to an older version of Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall), who has taken it upon herself to revisit some of the digital recordings she has from a trip she took to Turkey when she was 11 with her dad, Calum. Aftersun is, therefore, essentially one long trip down memory lane. The few present-day detours it takes on the way toward its heart-stopping conclusion only further imbue Sophie and Calum’s trip with an even greater sense of heartbreak and loss.

Sophie has, it turns out, begun excavating her memories in the hopes that she might finally be able to understand her father, who died shortly after his and his daughter’s fateful trip together. We’re never told how Calum died, and Wells never wastes any time exploring the 20 years that have passed since Sophie’s final vacation with him. In fact, Wells’ script for Aftersun never verbally communicates any of this information. The film, instead, establishes its “plot” through images and details that become impossible to forget. A handful of sequences in which Rowlson-Hall’s adult Sophie calls out to Mescal’s Calum in a dark, strobe-lit nightclub, for instance, make her character’s desire to reconnect with her father even after his death startlingly, heart-wrenchingly clear.

Wells brings the same level of restraint to her depiction of Calum, a mysterious figure whose internal pain is only made apparent by the knowledge of what ultimately happens to him. Mescal, for his part, turns in one of the year’s more well-calibrated, lived-in performances. He, in collaboration with Wells, builds a complete character out of nothing more than a series of short emotional breaks and long, contemplative silences. It’s a testament to the line Aftersun ultimately rides that we’re able to simultaneously understand why Corio’s younger Sophie was so mystified by her father and also discern with devastating clarity the same pain within him that Rowlson-Hall’s older Sophie can’t unsee.

Wells’ script never makes the mistake of spelling out Calum’s issues too clearly. Aside from one small scene in which Calum tells his curious daughter about a disappointing birthday from his childhood, we’re never truly allowed into his mind or given much insight into his past. Instead, Calum’s demons arise in small, all-too-relatable moments, like when his frustration over repeatedly trying and failing to put on a scuba suit briefly gets the better of him, the strain and embarrassment of it all turning his face red and ruining his mood.

Later, when Sophie talks about how she sometimes feels so tired that she becomes convinced her bones don’t work anymore, Wells’ camera briefly drifts over to Mescal’s Calum. Standing in front of a hotel room sink, Calum listens to his daughter speak and we watch, helplessly, as the fear that he’s passed his own problems onto Sophie overwhelms him. When he subsequently spits at his own reflection, it’s both a shocking moment of physical aggression and the only logical response for Calum, a man who frequently struggles to hide his own self-loathing from his daughter.

Aftersun doesn’t hurry to get to its biggest moments of emotional revelation or catharsis. The film takes its time in every sense of the phrase, which leads to its second act feeling occasionally listless and meandering. For some viewers, the film’s deliberately languid pace may even distract from the poignancy of its story and, especially, its perfectly-executed final five minutes. Those who are able to get on Aftersun ’s wavelength and give it the patience that it requires will, however, likely find themselves growing increasingly attached to its world and characters.

That’s because it’s ultimately irrelevant whether one identifies with Calum and Sophie’s relationship or not. It’s Aftersun ’s desperate desire to find answers in Sophie’s memories that makes it so emotionally effective and compelling. Wells understands, better than most it seems, that memories are puzzle pieces that change over time. In Aftersun , Sophie’s memories don’t so much lose their shape as they do their size. Put together, they form a picture that would be complete were it not for the ever-widening spaces that run throughout it. The power of Aftersun doesn’t just come from how it explores the spaces that separate its memories from reality, but in how it attempts, perhaps fruitlessly, to close them.

Aftersun is playing in select theaters now.

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Product Reviews

Sometimes, you can tell which movies are going to play well during awards season. A24's upcoming release, Aftersun, seems likely to get a lot of attention simply by being unique in the marketplace. It's not a conventional drama, nor are the stakes sky-high. Instead, it's an emotionally affecting look at a young girl's bond with her father, through apparent home movies that were filmed decades ago. This gives Aftersun an unusual look that makes it stand out from the crowd. But it wouldn't mean anything if the viewer didn't care for the two leading characters.

Aftersun | Official Trailer HD | A24

Meet Cute wants to be a lot of things at once. The film, which premieres exclusively on Peacock this week, is simultaneously a manic time travel adventure, playful romantic comedy, and dead-serious commentary on the messiness of romantic relationships. If that sounds like a lot for one low-budget rom-com to juggle — and within the span of 89 minutes, no less — that’s because it is. Thanks to the performance given by its game lead star, though, there are moments when Meet Cute comes close to pulling off its unique tonal gambit.

Unfortunately, the film’s attempts to blend screwball comedy with open-hearted romanticism often come across as hackneyed rather than inspired. Behind the camera, director Alex Lehmann fails to bring Meet Cute’s disparate emotional and comedic elements together, and the movie ultimately lacks the tonal control that it needs to be able to discuss serious topics like depression in the same sequence that it throws out, say, a series of slapstick costume gags. The resulting film is one that isn't memorably absurd so much as it is mildly irritating.

Pearl is a candy-coated piece of rotten fruit. The film, which is director Ti West’s prequel to this year's X, trades in the desaturated look and 1970s seediness of its parent film for a lurid, Douglas Sirk-inspired aesthetic that seems, at first, to exist incongruently with its story of intense violence and horror. But much like its titular protagonist, whose youthful beauty and Southern lilt masks the monster within, there’s a poison lurking beneath Pearl’s vibrant colors and seemingly untarnished Depression-era America setting.

Set around 60 years before X, West’s new prequel does away with the por nstars, abandoned farms, and eerie old folks that made its predecessor’s horror influences clear and replaces them with poor farmers, charming film projectionists, and young women with big dreams. Despite those differences, Pearl still feels like a natural follow-up to X. The latter film, with its use of split screens and well-placed needle drops, offered a surprisingly dark rumination on the horror of old age. Pearl, meanwhile, explores the loss of innocence and, in specific, the often terrifying truths that remain after one’s dreams have been unceremoniously ripped away from them.

Aftersun Review

18 Nov 2022

Rare and special is a film capable of summoning this much poignancy: a feeling which lingers well beyond the film’s final, achingly moving moments on screen. That Aftersun is the debut from British filmmaker Charlotte Wells only adds to its accomplishment.

For the most part, this two-hander of a drama moves along a languorous linear timeline: Calum (Paul Mescal) is on the brink of his 31st birthday, and committed to giving his daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) the best experience he can with the little money he has.

Their days are filled with idle pastimes and familiar rituals, like the careful application of after-sun cream to each other’s faces at the end of a long and somehow exhausting day. Wells masterfully creates a transfixing rhythm via running motifs — hang-gliders drifting across the sky, bare British limbs knocking together by the pool — to further pull you into their world, one of tinny ’90s chart music and luminous fizzy drinks. Eleven-year-old Sophie is starting to notice the hormones in the air, and the way the older kids touch. Other than his palpable love for his daughter, Calum keeps his feelings caged. Instead, a series of small sentiments slowly build up the profile of a young man who has lost his sense of self-worth, at a time when dialogue around mental health was less robust.

Frankie Corio is a revelation, imbuing Sophie with scrappiness and affection that never feels forced.

Mescal played his first lead role in Normal People only two years before Aftersun but is already proving to be a unique and complex screen presence, with crooked charisma and a talent for playing characters who aren’t all that they appear to be. As Calum, he delivers a soulful performance that unfurls gradually, heartbreakingly, over the holiday. Corio, meanwhile, is a revelation, imbuing Sophie with scrappiness and affection that never feels forced. Together, the pair conjure a tenderness that is, at times, breathtaking; in one scene, Mescal traces Corio’s eyebrow with his finger until Sophie falls into an easy sleep.

Their story exists in the form of adult Sophie’s (Celia Rowlson-Hall) memories, who, on her own 30th birthday, has that holiday heavily on her mind. Rather than a conventional flashback device, Wells puts Calum and older Sophie together under the flashing lights of a crowded, kinetic dancefloor, moving to the music in a way that feels far more powerful than words could achieve. The final act doesn’t pack a big gut-punch moment, but evokes all the emotional weight of one. The end of Calum and Sophie’s holiday is inevitable, though not before a joyful, precious few final moments together.

Aftersun plays out as a deftly orchestrated, empathetic and honest character study. It is beautifully performed, and captured with heart and ingenuity by Wells, who isn’t afraid to play with framing and style (the holiday is filmed in part on a shaky MiniDV camera) to compliment her story. Breakout filmmaking simply doesn’t come more exciting than this.

Movies | 19 02 2023

Movies | 02 12 2022

'Aftersun' Review: Paul Mescal Mesmerizes in Charlotte Wells’ Feature Debut

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The Big Picture

Aftersun is a reflective film about memory with the power to linger in your mind.
It captures the fleeting nature of time through a deeply emotional father-daughter relationship.
The film's dreamlike quality, stunning visuals, and evocative music create a moving and unforgettable cinematic experience.

This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival .

There are some films that manage to so thoroughly bring to life the fragments of memory that you feel as though you are reflecting on your own life along with it. Aftersun , the stunning debut feature from writer-director Charlotte Wells , is one such work. While clearly reflective about the past and the way we recall it as we move into the future, there is an enduring quality to it that ensures it is a film that will echo in your mind for time eternal .

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...

What Is 'Aftersun' About?

The film places us with the young Sophie ( Frankie Corio ) who is on a holiday to Turkey with her father Calum ( Paul Mescal ). It is just the two of them though this seems to largely suit each just fine as they initially alternate between moments of peaceful relaxation and joyous play. However, their time is limited as no vacation away can last forever even when we may wish it to. Sophie, in her smart and silly way, has begun to sharply observe the world around her . She is at the age where much is still new though in a way that she can start to make sense of. Much of this includes her father who, despite the way he tries to keep closed off, is frequently struck by sudden moments of darkness. The film is filtered through the eyes of Sophie who clearly cares for her father though is not sure about what to make of a young man who is plainly troubled. He is not an unkind person, just one who is deeply uncertain about himself and what role he will have as a father while still trying to determine his own life.

There is a quietly profound poetry to seeing this all play out as the film feels both endlessly patient yet effortlessly poised . Each scene between the father and daughter feels so completely lived in, making for an experience where you begin to forget you are watching a movie as opposed to just two people sharing a moment together. There is so much to get immersed in as the details of every moment are overwhelming and minimalistic.

It shows that a simple story can sing precisely because of how it finds beauty in the everyday. The dialogue is so natural yet no less resonant as we get to see Mescal bring all the haunting nuances of Calum out. There is something that is weighing heavily on him, which the film keeps hidden as he does from his daughter, making for a complex cocktail of a character. He can turn on a dime, going from being more charming and comedic to somber with a subtle change in expression. One moment Calum takes alone to himself shows just how broken he is despite all his gentle bravado he puts forth. Despite all the challenges that can come from being a child actor, Corio also never misses a single beat in a dynamic debut performance .

'Aftersun' Is a Film as Precious as Memory Itself

There is a tragedy to everything as we feel just how fleeting this time Calum and Sophie get to share really is . At one point, she wonders aloud why they don’t just stay here and spend their days jumping around from place to place. It is an innocent line, almost a throwaway, but it brings with it a devastating impact. There are countless moments like this as every conversation, even the ones about ordinary topics, feel precious in a way that we can’t always put our finger on. The entire experience is besought by a looming sense of loss, as if this entire time is one that will inevitably slip through our fingers forever.

Much of this comes from how the film makes use of recurring home videos, often playing out in extended sequences as the two talk together. Sophie seems aware of the sadness that is swallowing up her father and wants to ask him about it, though often lacks the precise words to do so. By capturing these moments, she seems to want to make them into memories that will allow her to better understand them later. It creates slices of life in what is already a slim slice-of-life picture, as if it is carving away less and less from the time that only so much of can be preserved . They are both clinging to moments in their lives that can only last so long.

There is an almost dreamlike quality to much of the film , especially in the glimpses we get of Calum where he is removed from the main setting. We only catch every other frame as he appears to be in a club of some kind with a strobe light leaving him frozen in time. This all is increasingly affecting the more it is used and in how it becomes incorporated by the end. The way music is overlaid in one particular concluding sequence cuts through all the liminality of time and space. It becomes a sensory experience that is evocative yet precise, making clear just how in command of everything Wells remains. The editing is also magnificent, maintaining movement in a way that is as mesmerizing as it is melancholic.

'Aftersun' Builds to an Astoundingly Beautiful Ending

There is an audacity to much of the way it all shifts into being more emotionally ephemeral, but there is no better way to capture the elusive emotional states being expressed. The way the visuals all dance across the screen in flashes of brilliance that strip away the barriers between form and feeling until they become one is nothing short of spectacular. This could easily leave some reeling, but it serves as a cinematic embrace that has the power to squeeze the breath out of you until there is nothing left. It washes over you, hitting you with wave after wave of vibrancy until it subsequently pulls the rug out from under you. What remains is a work of remembrance, overflowing with all the joys and pains to be found in looking back, that shows just how tenuous our connection to the past can really be. After all is said and done, it is films like Aftersun that will stand the test of time long after we are gone .

Charlotte Wells' Aftersun is an outstanding debut that will linger in our memories for time eternal.

Both Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio never miss a single beat, capturing a complex cinematic cocktail of emotion.
The film is as precious as memory itself, with every technical element coming together to create something breathtaking.
Everything builds to an astoundingly beautiful ending with the power to squeeze the life out of you until there is nothing left.

Aftersun is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S. starting June 21.

WATCH ON NETFLIX

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Common Sense Says
Parents Say 2 Reviews
Kids Say 5 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Nostalgic drama studies depression; smoking, some language.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 14+?

Occasional use of the word "f--k" as well as "arse." A character gives the middl

Two teens are shown kissing passionately. A young character shares their first k

Set on a holiday resort, people are shown drinking beer and wine. Teens are seen

Suicide is a theme in the movie. It's suggested that a character takes their own

Characters order specific drinks such as Coca-Cola and Fanta.

Any Positive Content?

The importance of managing trauma and grief and allowing memories, both good and

Calum is a good father. He is flawed, damaged, and suffering from depression, bu

The film only really has two characters of note, a father and a daughter. They'r

Occasional use of the word "f--k" as well as "arse." A character gives the middle finger to another.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two teens are shown kissing passionately. A young character shares their first kiss with someone of the same age. Two strangers are also seen kissing. A character's naked behind is briefly shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Set on a holiday resort, people are shown drinking beer and wine. Teens are seen doing shots. A child tries a sip of their parent's beer. The same parent talks about drugs with their child, hoping to create a safe space for them to have a dialogue about it as they get older. People are seen smoking cigarettes and shisha. One character picks up a lit cigarette from the ground after someone drops it on the floor.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Suicide is a theme in the movie. It's suggested that a character takes their own life. A character becomes separated from their parent.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Positive messages.

The importance of managing trauma and grief and allowing memories, both good and bad, to help shape who we are today.

Positive Role Models

Calum is a good father. He is flawed, damaged, and suffering from depression, but he cares for his daughter, Sophie. He makes mistakes, such as neglecting her one night, leaving her to fend for herself in a foreign country. But on this occasion he's not himself. Sophie is both independent, pensive, and curious. She tries to live a full life, finding some kind of peace and understanding about what happened to her as a child.

Diverse Representations

The film only really has two characters of note, a father and a daughter. They're both White, and holidaying in Turkey so many supporting characters are of Middle Eastern descent, and we get a sense for the culture they are living within. Mental health issues in men are explored. A character is gay, which is not a plot-point, just presented as a matter-of-fact.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Aftersun is a slow-burning but brilliantly moving drama that focuses on mental health in men -- with themes around suicide -- and a daughter dealing with a difficult past. Sophie is independent as a child (Frankie Corio), and reflective as an adult (Celia Rowlson-Hall). Her father, Calum ( Paul Mescal ), is a good father, but he is a flawed one. He makes mistakes, such as leaving her locked out of the room one night on their holiday in Turkey. Turkish culture is explored in an affectionate way, from the blissful perspective of tourists. People are shown smoking shisha and cigarettes. Characters also drink alcohol, with teens drinking to excess. Even a child tries a sip of beer. Drugs and alcohol are discussed, fleetingly, between Calum and Sophie as he hopes to create an open dialogue and safe space for her as she gets older. There is kissing and a male character's bare behind is seen in one scene. "F--k" is heard on occasion, as is "arse." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (2)
Kids say (5)

Based on 2 parent reviews

A beautiful movie suitable for older kids, but likely will bore them

What's the story.

AFTERSUN follows Calum ( Paul Mescal ) and his daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) as they take a holiday to Turkey, a trip that will live with the latter forever. Twenty years later, on her birthday, Sophie finds footage causing her to reflect and ponder on the experiences she had that shaped her, for better or for worse.

Is It Any Good?

This profoundly emotional drama is one of the most assured, confident debut productions from a first-time filmmaker you're likely to see. From Aftersun 's very opening frame, Charlotte Wells knows exactly the story she is telling, and has complete power over the narrative. With this control, she takes the viewer on a quite staggeringly moving journey. It's a voyage through time and memories, studying how we reflect and remember times past to try and reconcile where we are now, and those we have loved (and lost).

The film delivers emphatically on two counts, as you connect in equal measure to both Calum, a 30-something father and Sophie, a 10-year-old girl. Calum shows the complexities of the human mind and the challenges that come with it. While Sophie's journey is one of nostalgic, hazy childhood memories. Fueling that nostalgia is a superb soundtrack. But what helps illuminate this production are the two central performances. Mescal is as good as he's ever been, and the young Corio is a revelation as Sophie. This isn't just one of the best films of the year, it's one of the best films in years.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how depression is portrayed in Aftersun . Did you find it unusual to see mental health issues in men addressed like this? Why, or why not? What are your own experiences when it comes to mental health?

Discuss the relationship between Calum and Sophie. Did it seem like a healthy father-daughter relationship? Why, or why not?

The movie is about looking back on the past. How do you feel when you look back at certain events from your life?

Talk about the strong language used in the movie. Did it seem necessary or excessive? What did it contribute to the movie?

How did the film depict drinking and smoking ? Were they glamorized? Did the characters need to do these things to look cool? What were the consequences ?

Movie Details

In theaters : October 21, 2022
On DVD or streaming : January 23, 2023
Cast : Paul Mescal , Frankie Corio , Celia Rowlson-Hall
Director : Charlotte Wells
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : A24
Genre : Drama
Topics : Holidays
Character Strengths : Curiosity
Run time : 102 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : some language and brief sexual material
Last updated : August 30, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Screen Rant

Beetlejuice review: being weird has never felt as good as burton's creepy cult classic.

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Michael Keaton's 10 Best Movies, Ranked

Beetlejuice ending explained: how it sets up michael keaton's beetlejuice 2 return, michael keaton's 10 best quotes from beetlejuice.

1988's Beetlejuice may not have been Tim Burton's first movie, but it was the project that truly launched him as a bold, weird, and creative voice in Hollywood. He was - and is - a voice for counter culture with great affection for mainstream pop culture, whose work is challenging, meta, and nostalgic, and who found, in Michael Keaton, a perfect muse.

They don’t make films like Beetlejuice any more, but then they don’t make filmmakers like Tim Burton either. Flicking through his art collections, Burton's characters - often sketched with frenetic energy - already feel recognizable. Unlike directors working to stylistic mandates and franchise playbooks, Burton's movies are best when he's allowed to be himself, and Beetlejuice absolutely fits that criteria.

Beetlejuice

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What's more impressive, on that front, is that Burton didn't write Beetlejuice . In stark contrast to the later projects where he attempted to apply his darker style to reimaginings of existing IPs (like Dumbo and Alice In Wonderland in particular), though, Beetlejuice feels unrestrained. That it came right before he made Batman (though that hiring actually came first), is still shocking: a fitting win for counter culture.

Michael Keaton Has Never Been Better Than He Is As Beetlejuice

He's only on screen for 17 minutes, but what an impact.

Keaton’s performance as Betelgeuse is ridiculous, explosive, and outrageous. He’s a shock jock, a non-PC comedian, and a lush, ostracized even by the dead community for being too much. Keaton brings a physicality that almost defies belief when you watch him in straighter work like his Bruce Wayne: he seems to manifest a paunch out of nowhere, and there’s never been a movie performance you could smell quite as much as Betelgeuse.

Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice, Batman (1989), and Birdman

Michael Keaton has been in some great movies over the years, and his best ten films are among the most impressive and varied of all Hollywood stars.

The supernatural exorcist is himself a commentary: the nightmarish end result that comes with nonconformity at an extreme point. Ironically, of course, he too craves normalcy (hence his desire to marry Lydia), but his radar for how to appropriately achieve that is completely broken. Betelgeuse is a parable of what Lydia could become or what any of us could, if we just stopped caring.

That’s the genius of Burton’s creation and Keaton’s performance: Betelgeuse is somehow likable. He ticks all manner of boxes that should make him completely despicable, and modern criticism tends to focus on his problematic nature, but that's exactly the point of him.

But Beetlejuice's Cast Is More Than Just Michael Keaton

Every actor is on point with winona ryder a stand out.

So many years on, it's easy to forget how excellent both Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis were as the tragic Maitlands, Adam and Barbara . The combination of Michael Keaton's colossal performance and Winona Ryder's modest, melancholic Lydia vacuum up so much of the attention that they shrink a little in memory. Rewatching it now, they're the key to the whole movie working, and actually, the sequel is poorer for their absence.

Ryder's performance is demure and very subtle: she nails the gothic malaise, draped in funeral attire, without fully stepping into the counter culture rage of something like Ghost World or The Craft. She's not bullied into her position, she seems to actively choose her "strange and unusual" armor for herself, and Ryder makes that fully believable. If you grew up loving the films or music Burton likes, you've met a Lydia. You've probably met several.

In the supporting cast, there are equally excellent performances: Jeffrey Jones is very good; C atherine O'Hara is a revelation of artistic neurosis ; and Glenn Shadix is a delight as the reprehensible Otho. Watching them in particular during the musical dinner sequence is one of Beetlejuice 's many highlights.

Beetlejuice Feels Like Burton's Personal Expression

This is where the director's playbook was written.

Lydia looking shocked in Beetlejuice with a red background

Beetlejuice still feels like the movie that most expresses Tim Burton as a filmmaker and storyteller , which is probably why it feels like the project he's having the most fun directing. After the knowingly meta, but innocent spirit of Pee-wee's Big Adventure 3 years later, it's also true expression of Burtoncore film-making. You don't have to look hard to find most of his trademarks in some fashion, in strokes both broad and very specific.

Watching his gothic suburban stories back, it’s so obvious that Burton grew up as an outsider in the Californian suburbs . Lydia is his stand-in: defiant and unusual, but also caught in a conflict between suburban comfort and her difference. Both are authentic, but their balance has to be worked on, and it’s usually the darker elements that come off worse.

Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz and Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse in Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice's ending leaves a lot of details unclear, but the Tim Burton horror comedy does reveal what happens to Beetlejuice, Lydia, and Barbara.

Looking at Lydia, you’d assume her people would be Betlegeuse and the other members of Burton’s grotesque carnival, but she’s drawn to the cozy suburbanism of the Maitlands. This feels like Burton expressing his own comfort in Hollywood: he’s someone who should be making more Ed Wood-like movies, but instead he’s far more suited to populating worlds made familiar by Hollywood traditions and tropes with friendly ghasts and ghouls.

Burton’s fun in Beetlejuice comes from clashing things together and finding their strange connections and how perverse the reactions can be in the most surprising ways. Edward Scissorhands appears to be about the invasion of suburbia by a monster, but actually it’s about a strange boy trying to find his place in a monstrous community. Beetlejuice is similarly coded: it’s not just a haunting, it’s about Lydia finding her home.

Beetlejuice Still Hits All The Right Notes

Burton's cult classic united a community and not just an audience.

Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse in Beetlejuice

Like much of Burton’s work, Beetlejuice is an anthem to non-conformity . But because this creative universe is told from Burton’s perspective, it’s actually the most traditionally “normal” people who are most abnormal. Lydia Deetz is a self-confessed oddity, gothic and isolated, it she’s among the least eccentric of Beetlejuice ’s cast of weirdos.

Interestingly, it’s the Maitlands who are the least odd in a ghost story that positions them as unnatural abominations. In actual fact, it’s obviously the Maitlands who are haunted, by the creeping poltergeist of gentrification by the Deetz. Then, on the other side of their conflict sits Betelgeuse, an exploitative snake oil salesman with devilish small print. Look hard enough and there’s commentary on late-stage Reaganism, displacement, gentrification and pastoral anxiety, and the subjective nature of art.

Michael Keaton established the iconic character of Beetlejuice in Tim Burton’s 1988 film. He's also become one of Burton's most quotable characters.

That might seem like unnecessary navel-gazing, but it’s important to help understand how Beetlejuice became a cultural phenomenon beyond its own boundaries . In Lydia and the Maitlands, people found themselves reflected, both at the surface level and in deeper ideological strands. Burton also captured something few talk about in counter culture circles: the symbiotic relationship of normal-appearing people and their goth best friends.

How Beetlejuice Holds Up Decades Later

It's still as fun to watch as it was back in 1988.

Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice Wedding

The special effects might not be incredibly glossy by 2024’s standards, but they’re more magical thanks to the use of stop-motion. And the rough edges feel like a more true expression of Burton’s living sketchbook. After all, otherworldly does not need to mean flawless.

What’s striking with Beetlejuice is how close the art design feels to Burton’s own sketches. Characters pop up - particularly in the afterlife sequences - who are realized fully from Burton’s twisted imagination. The sequel went further, but the director’s flair for the macabre was honed here. They take up little screen-time, but the shrunken-headed hunter, the Road Kill Man, and chain-smoking caseworker Juno are memorable well beyond their immediate impact.

It’s not a particularly scary movie, but Burton never really wades that far into horror territory. Instead, Beetlejuice is weird and unsettling, but everything that’s presented as odd tends to be consciously made mundane . The Maitlands’ experience of the dead world is a government-like agency, the dead have jobs, and even Betelgeuse is subject to rules. There is banal order even in the most extraordinary things. That's why Beetlejuice is - and will remain - one of the most weirdly comforting movies ever made.

Tim Burton's Beetlejuice stars Michael Keaton as the titular "bio-exorcist", an obnoxious spirit who specializes in driving living occupants out of homes. When Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin) die suddenly, they pass into the spirit realm, and must stay in their home. However, in the living world, the Deetz family purchases the house and moves in, prompting the Maitlands to enlist the help of Beetlejuice to drive them away.

Michael Keaton is a revelation, obviously.
The rest of the cast are all uniformly excellent.
Burton's creative vision feels fresh and transformative.

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Aftersun movie review & film summary (2022)
Calum is swallowed up by the blackness, and the gentle lapping of the waves slowly crescendos to the sound of thundering surf. Wells' 2015 short film " Tuesday " could be seen as "Aftersun" in embryo. A college student spends Tuesday nights at her dad's, even though her mother seems against it. The girl wanders through her dad's ...
'Aftersun' Review: A Father and Time
Eleven-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her father, Calum (Paul Mescal), are mostly too caught up in the delights and frustrations of the present to express much sorrow or anxiety, but they ...
Aftersun
Feb 13, 2024. Aftersun is a sad and beautiful exploration of grief, of Sophie's struggle to reconcile complex and conflicting feelings about her father, and her struggle to forgive his decision ...
'Aftersun' review: This is the best film of the year by a first time
For Wells, the territory of the human heart is all she needs to keep us smiling, nodding in recognition and then fighting back tears. "Aftersun" is a father-daughter story, based on Wells' life as ...
'Aftersun' Review: Paul Mescal Leads a Striking Father ...
'Aftersun' Review: Paul Mescal's Charisma Powers a Summer Vacation Portrait That Isn't as Sunny as It Seems Reviewed at British Film Institute, London, May 11, 2022. (In Cannes Film ...
'Aftersun' review: Charlotte Wells' piercing debut film
Review: 'Aftersun,' one of the year's great debut films, is a piercing father-daughter story. Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal in the movie "Aftersun.". Something odd happened to me during ...
'Aftersun' review: This is the best film of the year by a first time
"Aftersun" is a father-daughter story, based on Wells' life as a young girl on vacation with her dad. The time is the late 1990s when the Walkman and karaoke held sway. The place is a budget beach resort in Turkey far from Scotland where dad left her and mom to live in London.
Aftersun
Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets ... Aftersun may just be the ...
Aftersun Review: Paul Mescal Shines in Charlotte Wells ...
A24 releases the film in theaters on Friday, October 21. A stunning debut that develops with the gradual poignancy of a Polaroid, Charlotte Wells ' " Aftersun " isn't just an honest movie ...
Aftersun film review: An astounding first feature that captures Paul
Aftersun review: An astounding first feature that captures Paul Mescal at his most heart-wrenching Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells has made a movie that feels as if it's teetering on the edge ...
'Aftersun': A father-daughter bond, seen through a haze of memory
October 26, 2022 at 9:21 a.m. EDT. (3 stars) The fragile fabric of memory, rendered in both mist and digital media, is the subject of "Aftersun," the assured and emotionally complex feature ...
'Aftersun' Review: A Father, a Daughter, and Things Left Unsaid
On the surface, this is a simple story of an 11-year-old girl and her father taking a brief trip to Turkey for her birthday. He's a man young enough to be confused for her older brother but ...
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May 21, 2022 4:30am. Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal in Charlotte Wells' 'Aftersun' Courtesy of Charlotte Wells. Charlotte Wells' sharp and tender Aftersun is the rare father-and-child drama that ...
Aftersun (2022)
Aftersun is a film that I wasn't sure I understood when the credits started rolling. Then, as I sat and thought about everything I had seen, I came to believe more and more that it's kind of genius. What the movie lacks in overt substantive plot it more than makes up for in authenticity and subtle placement of character-building images and ...
'Aftersun' review: the best British movie this year
'Aftersun' review: Paul Mescal hits new heights in the best British movie this year. His latest is a moody, melancholic rumination on parenthood and the passage of time. 4. By James Mottram.
'Aftersun' Netflix Paul Mescal Movie Review: Stream It or Skip It?
Stream It Or Skip It: 'Aftersun' on Netflix, a Pensive, Moving Father-Daughter Drama From Gifted Filmmaker Charlotte Wells. By John Serba. Published June 22, 2024, 7:30 a.m. ET. Aftersun (now ...
'Aftersun' Movie Review: A Work of Gorgeous Melancholy
Throughout Aftersun, Mescal is a marvel of boyish fun masking a deep streak of self-loathing he tries mightily to hide from his daughter, but in that sequence, as Sophie stands there discovering ...
'Aftersun' review: Paul Mescal stars in a moving father-daughter story
Aftersun, the debut feature from writer/director Charlotte Wells, is seemingly split in two.There's the main plot: father Calum (Paul Mescal) and his daughter Sophie's (Frankie Corio) vacation to ...
Aftersun film review
The child's-eye view at the heart of the film is uncanny. It also often comes to rest on Calum. And here the other side of Aftersun takes shape: a more melancholy, complex picture. Sophie is ...
Aftersun review: a tender, heart-wrenching memory piece
An unforgettable final 5 minutes. Cons. An overly languid pace. A meandering second act. Charlotte Wells' directorial debut, Aftersun, is an open-hearted, tender piece of filmmaking. It crackles ...
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Aftersun Review. In the late 1990s, 30-year-old single father Calum (Mescal) takes his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Corio) to a Turkish holiday resort for a rare trip together. Years later, an ...
'Aftersun' Review
10 10. Charlotte Wells' Aftersun is an outstanding debut that will linger in our memories for time eternal. Pros. Both Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio never miss a single beat, capturing a complex ...
Aftersun Movie Review
Parents need to know that Aftersun is a slow-burning but brilliantly moving drama that focuses on mental health in men -- with themes around suicide -- and a daughter dealing with a difficult past. Sophie is independent as a child (Frankie Corio), and reflective as an adult (Celia Rowlson-Hall). Her father,….
"A Thinking Man's Rambo": Stephen King Gives New Netflix Movie A
Stephen King is a massive supporter of all kinds of pop culture, leading to the writer regularly sharing his endorsements on social media. He previously praised Strange Darling (2023), Malignant (2021), Evil Dead Rise (2023), and Late Night With the Devil (2023), along with numerous other movies.He primarily shares praise for horror movies, which makes sense for the author of It, The Shining ...
Beetlejuice Review: Being Weird Has Never Felt As Good As Burton's
1988's Beetlejuice may not have been Tim Burton's first movie, but it was the project that truly launched him as a bold, weird, and creative voice in Hollywood. He was - and is - a voice for counter culture with great affection for mainstream pop culture, whose work is challenging, meta, and nostalgic, and who found, in Michael Keaton, a perfect muse.

Sheila O'Malley

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