Aftersun (2022)

Directed by Charlote Wells

11-year-old Sophie spends an unforgettable summer holiday in Turkey with her father in the nineties. Their time together is captured by a brand new Panasonic hand-held. 20 years later, adult Sophie watches the videos to make sense of her relationship with her father and understand Callum as a person. Her mental image of their holiday, the pixelated images of the camera and glimpses of Callum in mirrors and behind half closed doors that she either didn’t register or understand as an 11-year-old result in a movie heavy with close-ups and narrow fields of view. The music is put to great effect, especially in the last scene and the movie does brilliantly what movies were invented for in the first - it bends time to its will and makes you experience everything at once to heart-wrenching effect.

In the end this movie isn’t focused on any kind of plot, but emotions. The wonder a child feels at a summer resort, the wet towels at the pool, the unforgiving mediterranean sun. The perfect place and time for self-exploration. The main characters both grapple with adulthood. Sophie being on the verge of discovering love, sexuality and adult responsibility and Callum feeling that he got there far too quickly. The love between daughter and father is beautifully shown in smiles, laughing and tender touches; touches without any context other than the love of a parent. As the holiday unrelentingly winds down, we witness an intimate study of her own past, as Sophie gets to know a new ethereal side of her father that she couldn’t perceive as a child.

A touching and tender drama about love of any kind and what it does to us.