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.
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.
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?
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