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66th BFI London Film Festival: Aftersun

Photo;: Courtesy A24.

Though it lacks for big name stars or crew, Aftersun still arrived at the 66th British Film Institute London Film Festival as one of the hottest tickets, riding on a wave of acclaim that I’m very happy to say will not break here. Aftersun is a rare film indeed that has found a fresh and forward-thinking sense of style that is both extremely creative without ever being remote or inaccessible. That it uses that style to tell such a poignant and universal story makes that story all the more lasting and meaningful.

Sophie is a 30-year-old woman and a new mother, but we only see this Sophie in glimpses, reflected in TV screens and viewing from the remote future, as only around five percent of the film takes place in the present day, as Sophie sifts through her memories looking for clues. The other 95% takes place when Sophie was 11 and her young dad Calum took her to a Mediterranean holiday park for the week. Over the course of their happy, playful interactions throughout the week, it slowly becomes suggested that something is going on with Calum and as the holiday goes on, the two start spending more and more time apart. Perhaps it’s a spoiler to say that we never truly find out what was up with Calum and maybe Sophie never found out either. We get hints and some might feel emboldened enough to draw their own conclusions. More significant is the effect his behavior is having on Sophie. Like many parents, he will be her first experience of heartbreak, and it will be by degrees.

The first thing Aftersun has that absolutely plays in its favor are the performances. Paul Mescal will likely feel familiar to you from The Lost Daughter, which was also set at a Mediterranean holiday resort. That film showed us his charm but he reveals new depths as an actor here, wrestling with an unspoken inner turmoil, all while keeping up appearances for his daughter. He’s a good dad, but he’s going through something we don’t understand and neither does Sophie. She herself is played by Francesca Corio in what will surely go down in history as one of the greatest child performances of all time. She’s completely genuine and believable every second of the film and she’s onscreen throughout almost all of it. Many of her scenes could only have been improvised because I struggle to believe any child actor could plausibly convey such an impression of spontaneity.

I recall Roger Ebert saying in his review of For Ellen, that children under age five can make the best actors as they don’t yet know how to act badly. Despite her age, Corio has the energy he was talking about. She’s funny, vivacious, lost in the moment, curious, confused and increasingly worried. Plaudits to her and to her director Charlotte Wells for creating an environment where she could give such a performance. If I ever have children, they have to be exactly like Sophie.

Getting great performances out of your cast, especially a young cast, is one thing. To combine it with such an inspired and articulate aesthetic approach, such a genius eye for shots and perfect taste in needle drops (you’ll never listen to “Under Pressure” or “Losing My Religion” the same way again) testifies to the presence of a genuine master of her medium. I’m equally excited and frightened to think what Wells might do after Aftersun. The way she and her director of photography Gregory Oke use their camera is so subtle and delicate yet so creative and impressionistic and it’s fantastically used by the edit.

At the time of viewing, Aftersun was my favourite film of the festival. It so happens that I saw an even better one shortly afterwards, but that ought to take nothing from the film Charlotte Wells and her team have made. It is one which is subtle, beautiful and so tragically full of life. It understands both childhood and parenthood in a way few other films could hope to, and contains moments of some of the most expressive and articulate humanity it could aspire to.

Written by Hal Kitchen

A graduate of the University of Kent, Reviews Editor Hal Kitchen joined Film Obsessive as a freelance writer in May 2020 following their postgraduate studies in Film with a specialization in Gender Theory and Studies. In November 2020 Hal assumed their role as Reviews Editor. Since then, Hal has written extensively for the site, writing analytical and critical pieces on film, and has represented the site at international film festivals including The London Film Festival and Panic Fest.

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