Wow, I was such a dick on my vacation at 11 years old. Mine was in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee, where I did NOT want to go, so teen angst started to take over, and I sulked my way through that trip to the chagrin of my justifiably irritated parents. Maybe if I got a chance to go to Turkey with a complicated, awkward but loving dad, I might have enjoyed my vacation a little more. Though I can vouch for Dollywood.
When you’re going to vacay in Turkey in the 1990s, of course Sophie (Frankie Corio) is going to videotape her experiences on an old school videocamera. She’s on holiday with her dad Calum (Paul Mescal), enjoying some daddy daughter time before school starts again. Being 11, Sophie is between childhood and adulthood, enjoying the joys of youth while also seeing what her life will be like soon via the teenagers at the resort. Plus, when he’s not paying attention, Sophie gets some insight into her father, and what adulthood has done to him.
Memories are fickle things. As time passes, the exact details of the day fade, replaced by pure emotional feeling at the time. My strongest memories are tied to ones with strong feelings, good or bad. Aftersun gives us Sophie’s memory in 24 frames per second (probably more at this point). Clearly writer/director Charlotte Wells is pulling from personal memories herself, with so many specific choices that fill in these scenes. I guess Charlotte really enjoyed Turkey! The movie like a mind adrift in thought wanders backwards and forwards in time, giving us a random collection of scenes as one thought leads to another (with slightly overlong pretentious transitions). Some scenes are fuzzy, some are still and clear, but within each of them Wells finds some clear feeling: curiosity, sadness, joy, excitement she can show the audience how she/Sophie felt at that moment in time.
The movie works though because of Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal. Corio is incredible here, crafting a totally believable, complicated lovable pre teen girl. I’m pretty sure my 11 year old self would have fallen in love with Sophie simply from her pool skills. Paul Mescal, the seasoned vet of the two, is equally dynamic. Mescal discreetly gives us the turmoil and conflict going on when Sophie isn’t paying attention to him, but when Sophie needs him to be there for her, his Calum steps up and is a mostly good father. The relationship Corio and Mescal create with one another is the movie’s secret sauce: the last father daughter relationship this good was in the spectacular Eighth Grade. I’ve personally had versions of conversations like this with my parents: asking them some deep questions and getting coded answers back I had to decipher, and vice versa, so as to not expose our most scary, vulnerable thoughts to someone for fear of rejection. Corio and Mescal capture the rhythms of real conversations people have everyday, amplifying Aftersun’s emotional sequences just a bit harder than a ho hum drama because of how easily they connect.
I legit was 11 when the Macarena was popular, which is the timeframe when Aftersun was set. The movie sucked me in with pop culture references from those pre teen years, but kept me watching by finding something honest to say about parent child relationships and memory. I look forward to the 2046 version of Aftersun, where a daughter goes through her father’s TikTok videos to figure out what was going on in his life. That movie pitch sounds HORRIBLE. Thank goodness for the 90s!