2022 Directed by Charlotte Wells
Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between miniDV footage as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn’t.
Lizzie Francke Tim Headington Barry Jenkins Adele Romanski Eva Yates Lia Buman Amy Jackson Mark Ceryak Alex Sutherland Kieran Hannigan
meant to review this at cannes, watched it 3 times, just never had the energy it deserves. will double back for it later this year, but for now i have no hesitation saying this was the best thing i saw at the fest.
A stunning directing debut from Charlotte Wells. A small, empathetic, poetic, deeply human story that I can't to dive into again. Beautiful use of symbolism too. Put this on your watchlist immediately.
Full review
Bowled over by this. Miraculous in the detail, so sad and sunny with heart-shattering performances from Francesca Corio and Paul Mescal. Holding on to this one for a long time.
When your parents are apart, by way of separation, death or any circumstance, I wonder if the way you split your love moves with it. I'm thinking if, before my mother's death, my love for my parents was carved down the middle, 50/50, or if it would change depending on who I was around at the time.
In Charlotte Wells' Aftersun, Sophie's love for her father weighs so heavily towards him, so doting and special, it's almost as if her love for her mother stayed at home while she came with him on holiday. For the duration of this trip, and the film itself, there is only these two.
And so we watch it pass by with familiar late-90s mundanity:…
The accidentally perfect Father’s Day Watch.
Aftersun is a film of nuance and detail laced between the serene quiet of its infrastructure. Feels almost like bordering on magical realism with its eye catching color palette and transcendentally static coverage.
For a while it seems meandering and wavering, but there are very deliberate intricacies in practically every film that go unnoticed, which instill truly moving meaning into the film. It wasn’t until one specific edit in the film’s 3rd act that I understood what it was conveying, but I didn’t feel like I had my time wasted.
Surely, it is still a debut film and feels like a freshman endeavor, with occasional rough moments and decisions. There are spurts of film…
Evocative of Somewhere down to the arm cast. But centered on a more precocious daughter and a more troubled father. And while Coppola’s film is stationary, Wells’s moves at a leisurely pace, shifting between formats and temporalities so as to afford the audience and character(s) a more wholistic glimpse at the past, rather than a snapshot of the present. Paul Mescal has so much hiding behind that gaze of his… which lends the whole film an air of impending unpleasantness—one which is never fully capitalized on, I think for the better. Because meditation isn’t supposed to be cathartic.
first off, I liked this, sometimes I liked it a lot, and it’ll be at the top of a bunch of year end lists. a barn burning crowd pleaser, woulda saved my life at 14. A treatise on the allure of denying parents empathy, the kind of empathy that would provide you healing, even when the camcorder footage gets corrupted and you’re scrambling for some footage as proof - of love, of the sturdiness of their image in your mind. No matter how hard you cry, the kind of hurt won’t sort itself out on a dime, it goes too slow for that. All told, a remarkable bit of humanist filmmaking that doesn’t sacrifice some stretches of gorgeous craft, but…
AFTERSUN is one of the best depictions of depression I’ve seen in film. Beautifully wrought with shots and score that play like a memory on loop. The last 10 minutes had the entire audience sobbing. Paul Mescal should be in the Oscar conversation. In tears. A masterpiece. #Cannes
aftersun 🤝 the lost daughter
quietly stirring paul mescal movies about a lonely parent in emotional crisis on a beach vacation
wow i loved this one. pulled me in slowly and then knocked me right out. what a beautiful debut for charlotte wells, who i look forward to seeing more from — and cinematographer gregory oke too, whose work here is incredibly striking and still on my mind hours later
perfect film to see while feeling melancholic and a
bit bored on holiday, if i may say so!
p.s. this is the second year in a row that a movie premiered at cannes prominently featuring the macarena
on est allées voir ce film d’abord pour le titre trop chouette et pour Paul Mescal mais dès les premières minutes j’ai su que j’allais adorer : une petite fille filme avec une caméra miniDV et à travers ses yeux on va découvrir un portrait sublime de son papa. Aftersun c’est une histoire de souvenirs de vacances, de caméscope et de papa qui va pas bien. c’est doux comme un souvenir dans lequel on se replonge des années plus tard, tout y prend un autre sens. j’avais envie que ça dure plus longtemps c’était si beau, triste, lent et touchant. Paul Mescal était impressionnant de justesse, vraiment le cinéma lui va bien ! je pense que ce film ne laissera pas grand monde indifférent hihi
et attention les dernières scènes sont incroyables, pas sympa de nous achever comme ça pour finir
envie de le revoir là tout de suite
trop trop beau !!! le montage & la photographie sont tout ce que j’aime vraiment un delice 🌞⛱
trop belle découverte de charlotte wells, et j’ai adoré voir paul mescal (normal people) dans ce rôle genre trop fort
