How do you say goodbye to a memory? For Charlotte Wellsit is accomplished by unearthing its immense power, typically hidden in a fragment of a whole, and letting the camera roll forward. The Scottish director finds the answer somewhere in the vast emotional world of After sunhis first feature film.
The movie turns a week into an eternity when Calum (Paul Mescal) and his daughter 11 years old, Sofia (Frankie Pelle), gather for a holiday on the Turkish coast, armed with a video camera to capture everything. Between brilliant blue skies and sun-kissed pink skin tones, the weather allows so much that we can almost watch moments turn into memories.
Eleven are the years in which the distance between children and parents becomes an abyss, e After sun He lives right in that ever-deeper gap. Even when they interact, father and daughter seem to possess an affective synergy, a calmness beyond the chatter that emanates from the way they interact. Sofia anticipate your concern and release an “I’m fine” without even looking up. While their conversations can be considered happy, there are also silences that delimit a line of dialogue. Indeed, the film is so careful – and aware – of its tonal shifts, that it offers a variety of types of silences: captivating, graceful, or confrontational, but never the same kind twice.
The dream cinematography of Gregory Okay simultaneously underlines the sunny haze of a summer at the seaside and the soft edges of memory. Between lazy days by the pool, trips to the resort’s restaurant and interacting with other guests, we watch home video clips shot by Sofia or Calum. Almost always frames Sofia With Calum in a medium plan or in detail. But when you look Calum Alone, the camera moves back, allowing only an obstructed, reflected or distant vision, as if melancholy united person and memory.
Despite an underlying melancholy, Calum aims for self-improvement as he gets older. In his baggage there are books on the subject Tai Chi and meditation. And, for all their differences, he and Sofia They communicate. She tells him that she has kissed Michaela boy she meets on vacation. Calum he encourages her to talk to him about anything. It’s moments like these that create immense intimacy, exactly as I intended. Wells: as if we were watching a movie of a home movie.
The soundtrack tells a story of its own, like Tender from Blura song whose title sums up the sensations it evokes After sun, arrives misshapen and dizzying in a distorted version. However, the spotlight is on a song performed by Queen yes David Bowie: Wells choose boldly Under pressureso much so that it acquires a powerful and emotional meaning while Freddie Mercury sing “this is our last dance” along with Sofia of the past and present try to reconstruct everything.
For Sofiahis father feels close yet unrecognizable: he knows how to dance, do tai chi and devise fun activities, but his inner world remains a mystery apart from these manifestations, which are made clear through the interpretation of Mescal of devastating depth. After sun he gives all his love to a reinvented past, piercing the present. Memories always have their blind spots. You remember the bright moments, while blocking the dark ones. It’s only when you look back and download them as an adult that you see their depth.
Throughout the film, one scene repeatedly and with blinding pace passes through the slowness of summer. Snippets of a rave appear amidst flashing light signals, to reveal an elderly woman – presumably Sofia– dancing, the gaze wandering through the crowd. As the sequence bleeds into the “past” timeline with hypnotic use of Under pressure. It’s real? Is a dream? Their juxtaposition serves as a metaphor for the entire film as a game to re-imagine the other.
It’s hard to describe After sun, because everything and nothing happens at the same time. While what’s happening on screen may seem mundane, it’s steeped in subtext. the depression of Calum he remains a barely glimpsed mystery, his shots reflected on the television screen and a tabletop serving as a visual reminder of what he’s fighting. There comes a time when you begin to understand your parents as people separate from you, whose lives have extended long before your arrival and contain vast unseen realms.
In a sense, everything After sun it plays backwards through its first four minutes as we see a tape being rewound, the distortion of which is still reminiscent of a family vacation. In keeping with that closeness, the allure of Wells for the way past and present coexist, he focuses on the eruption points, the slow dripping, the stickiness of memory like ice cream in hand on a hot summer day.
After sun it is not the re-creation of a memory, although the act of remembering is obviously the focus. It’s about balancing the intimacy of being cared for as a child with the prospect of being an adult. More than anything, it’s about wanting to travel through time and meet a loved one in an impossible space, where, for once, both are on the same level and you can finally understand them for who they are, or for what they were.
After sun arrives at THE BAD the January 6th.
