Sun lotion
Charlotte Wells debut feature film is named 'Aftersun' and there's multiple pool-side scenes of that synonymous lotion being applied to 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) by her almost 31-year-old dad, Calum (Paul Mescal).
They're from Edinburgh, though Calum is living alone in London, and they're on their summer holiday in Turkey, at some point in the late 90's.
Virtually all of the film is set during the seven days of this father-daughter holiday, at a low budget resort; not a lot happens, beyond what happened to most of us on holidays with our parents, when we were children.
The pivotal, dramatic scenes of big things happening are all best watched, not spoiled.
Cheap and cheerful holidays
Calum and Sophie sit by the pool, on sun loungers. They play pool and arcade games. Go to the beach. Have dinner. Sit by the pool some more. Go swim in the sea. There doesn't seem to be a lot else to do at this resort, which is about what you expect from this type of holiday.
Hardcore football fans on this side of the Atlantic will immediately date the holiday to the summer of 1998, due to Sophie wearing Heart of Midlothian's 1997-98 home kit and also Manchester United's 97-98 home kit being worn by an English tourist at pool-side.
On the other side of the ocean, the vacation is just as easily dated to the same period by the epic late 90's soundtrack featuring Blur, Lightning Seeds, Catatonia, Chubawamba, Aqua, All Saints.
For a film with not many dramatic moments, for those moments to have such a profound impact on viewers is a testament to the incredible central performances of the director and actors.
11-year-old Frankie Corio gives arguably the best acting performance from a child since Saoirse Ronan in Atonement and if Paul Mescal isn't nominated for an Oscar, he can count himself unlucky.
In many recent years, he'd have been a certainty for a nomination.
One adult, one child
This is a story about an adult and a child. Frankie and Paul dominate screen-time to the extent it could be an intimate two-person theatre play and you may not even notice the extras, for much of it.
Which adult and child the film is about is a different question, open to interpretation, which speaks to the haunting use of perspective in telling the story of this holiday.
In the very first scene of the film, and also featured in the trailer, there's an adult 30-something Sophie in a nightclub rave, with her eyes closed and seemingly remembering the past. It then cuts to 11-year-old Sophie sitting beside her dad on a bus, just after they've arrived in Turkey.
Lots of perspectives
The story that unfolds is told from so many perspectives or maybe just the one, depending on how your own mind processes what you see on screen.
Some of the holiday is captured by child-Sophie and Calum on their camcorder and the film intermittently cuts to this footage, the only objectively reliable narration of what happened in Turkey.
The rest of the story is possibly told from Sophie's memory, which can prove less reliable for most people.
As a viewer you may well just see the holiday (and film itself) as unfolding purely from child-Sophie's perspective in real time, which is also a very reliable narration.
You may also see it as fleetingly being told from Calum's perspective.
Pick the pair that fits
One of the deep beauties of the film is how the emotional resonance shifts, depending on whose shoes a viewer wants to put themselves in.
You're not stuck for choice. This is a film that discretely invites us to consider events from different perspectives; the only certainty ever given is that camcorder footage, beyond that you can interpret the narrative perspective in any way you wish.
The emotional weight carried by dramatic moments in the film doesn't just depend on who you think is telling the story; it also depends on where your own empathy exists in relation to these characters, in time and space.
You can comfortably watch this film in the present of the past, you can be right there as an observer in the 1990's with this child and adult on their package holiday, as Blur's Tender rises above them playing chess on the hotel balcony.
Or you can watch this film in the present of the present, be right with Sophie in the 2020's and observing the child-now-adult recollecting some treasured memories.
It can still leave you in floods of tears either way, for different reasons, mainly...
Love
The father-daughter relationship in this film circumvents most tropes of single parenthood in film, there's no uneasiness or sense of something amiss in how the child was cared for before this holiday.
Calum is a good man and good father, thought not flawless, with a positively healthy relationship with Sophie's mam and with his daughter. Sophie's mam doesn't feature on screen but it's clear to see she is a good woman and good mother, from how the protagonists briefly speak with her.
Sophie clearly loves both of her parents, a fact you discover in the trailer for the film.
There's no lurking hints of abuse, drama or trauma in her background, she seems surrounded by love in the presence of either parent and radiates love herself.
Changes
Sophie is in the in-between phase of childhood and teenagehood.
On one hand, she's very much a child; delighting in seeing an octopus in the sea and telling the story with child-like wonder. On the other hand, she sees older teenagers having fun and shows more interest in hanging around with them, than with younger children at the resort.
She's on the verge of changes in her life, though hasn't fully let go of the innocence of a small child.
Bridging the unbridgeable gap in our memory
This film poses an unanswerable existential question, one many have asked before.
If you could go back in time to your childhood and observe those events through your now-adult eyes, who were your parents really at that time?
11-year-old Sophie is on the cusp of understanding her parents as their own people and she is, at the very least, acutely aware money is pretty tight for her dad. There's a moment all children begin to empathize with adults about things like that and she's at that moment.
What adult-Sophie couldn't process as a child is all the fears, worries, anxieties, stresses that come with being a financially struggling single parent to a young girl, who is growing up fast.
What were the specific worries in his life, ones that all parents keep from small children? What were those 'ninja moves' her dad used to do and why did he do them? What did he do when she was off with her new friends on that holiday?
Who was he then? Who is he since then?
Her memories and camcorder footage can't ever bridge that gap to know exactly but that doesn't stop her from trying.
A devastating beauty
This film is absolutely gorgeous, visually.
Charlotte Wells frames most of it in soft blues of the swimming pool, sea and sky. The use of ingenious camera angles and perspectives is never more evident than one stunning scene in the middle of the film, featuring a reflection.
It's simply beautiful to watch, irrespective of connecting to the heart of the story.
Exceptionally edited and features dream-like sequences in the nightclub rave, which are vital to a deeper understanding of the story. Although flashing lights in a nightclub are a problem for some viewers, if you can follow what's happening in those brief scenes, the denouement will hit you like a ton of bricks.
This film makes most people cry, judging from online reaction. I can vouch for that.
What's great is people take away very different interpretations of what actually happened on this holiday and in the intervening decades thereafter.
Real
Acting performances from Frankie and Paul are so exceptional that you can watch almost the entire film before realizing 'wait, that's not actually Paul's daughter'.
There's a moment at the very end when it hit me this was definitely acting, yet until then they lull you into believing this father-daughter relationship absolutely exists in the real world, which is an astonishing skill all actors aspire to.
It's the most beautiful depiction of love, memory, nostalgia, and the pain of understanding a little better who a person once was, not just who they are today.
A discovery made at a point in time, so far removed, that you can never do anything to help them with who they could be.
How good love feels
What exists on old home videos, as children with our parents, can feel like a dulled, black n' white facsimile of once-vibrant 3-dimensional moments, that were lived, felt and experienced. Those moving images, without our memories to colour them in, may as well be watching different people altogether.
Which they may well have been.
This film isn't purely about the closeness and unconditional love a father held for his child and a child for her father, on a summer holiday.
It's about the vast distance we have to cross as adults, to remember how love feels to a child.
You may want to hug someone you love after watching this film and if you can't do that, for reasons of physical distance or otherwise...
...can always try bridge the gap in your memory, to reach them.
