Movie Review : Aftersun (2022)
Nostalgia and melancholy are cousins on paper. They kind of are in real life too. Both are specific longings for the past, characterized by an absence of something that should ideally still be there. One is somewhat pleasurable and the other isn't, but they' often coexist within the same memories and sometimes within the same people too. Charlotte Wells' debut film Aftersun is one of these instances where nostalgie and melancholy waltz gracefully together on screen. It's complex movie that is sometimes great and sometimes not.
Aftersun tells the story of Sophie (Frankie Corio), a young mother who reminisces memories of the last trip she'd taken with her recently divorced father Calum (Irish heartthrob Paul Mescal) when she was 11. I mean, it is not said in the film that it was her last trip with her dad, but it is strongly alluded to. Lounging in a Turkish resort, Sophie and Calum face the inevitability of change together. As a family, but also as a girl leaving childhood behind and turning into a young woman in Sophie's case.
Depression, absence and the romanticizing of mental health issues
Full disclaimer : I volunteer at a suicide hotline. I’m trained to help people in crisis, so I’m a little picky when it comes to representation of mental health problems and the damage they cause on screen. Aftersun is super realistic in that regard, but not in the way you think. Because what happens is filtered through the lens of Sophie's memories and our memories are always idealized versions of what really happened. It is assumed that her dad killed himself shortly after their vacation and it kind of left him to be "that guy" forever.
When they pass, people become part of our memories and become idealized versions of themselves by design. To Sophie, Calum is this forever soft, loving and tormented young man who was ushered into wedlock and fatherhood before really understanding what it meant. Mescal carries that fear and confusion on screen really well. He embodies the fearful uncertainty that young men harbour towards their feelings, but he is a memory. He is not real. That’s kind of both the calling card and the problem of Aftersun.
People don’t just discreetly fade away. Sophie chooses to remember that last moment to be pregnant with the prospects of a parallel existence that turned out to never be available to her. It's nice and sweet and innocent and whatnot, but it's a desire. Who the fuck knows if Calum would've grown into being a great dad? Especially that he was undergoing an obvious mental health crisis. Sophie idealized the pain her father was bearing. She turned him into a martyr, which is not that uncommon among survivors.
But it's causing pain as much as it heals.
Not So Little Sophie
The one thing I was considerably less torn about in Aftersun was Not So Little Sophie. Kids who talks like adults in movies are a huge pet peeve of mine. Ten minutes into the movie (perhaps even less than that), it becomes clear that eleven years old Sophie isn't eleven years old Sophie. She's the eleven years old Sophie that thirty-one years old Sophie wanted to needed to be. No eleven years old can hold sophisticated discussion like she does. All they talk about is their favorite YouTubers or some lame shit that happened at school.
Kids don't make you think about your life. They get you out of your head. It's an important difference. All the interactions between Sophie and her dad sounded wrong and grating to me, like fucking ungrateful child and deadbeat dad slowly destroying one another. I had to constantly remind myself that it wasn’t what really happened to Sophie, that she was literally playing her memories back to herself on old, beat up VHS. Man, it's a complicated movie and I had complicated feelings about it and they’re kind of my fault.
*
I feel like I’m committing a heresy here, but I didn't like Aftersun all that much. I understand it was an indie darling and whatnot, but it's a great, heartbreaking example of how a suicide can absolutely wreck someone's life up and create wounds that never fully heal. Some people will see the romance in that, but I don't. I was looking forward to this movie. I was looking forward to letting it make me emotional and melancholic and it totally did, but somehow I hate it for that. I’m a terrible movie date, guys.
