Do we truly understand our parents? Charlotte Wells' exquisite and nostalgic debut, "Aftersun" (Aftersun), offers both reflection and answers to this question. Undoubtedly, one of the most delightful films of the recent year 2022, director and writer Charlotte Wells drew inspiration from her family album, presenting a poignant and powerful story that acts almost like a requiem, reflecting on the content of memories, the gaps between them, and the nature of memory itself.
Father, daughter, and the unsaid
"Aftersun" tells a deceptively simple family vacation story. The narrative perspective unfolds through the personal recollections of adult Sophie, and these memories spanning almost a lifetime are carried by a childhood DV recording. Through the recorded memories, Sophie revisits the last vacation with her father Calum at the age of 11. In childhood, 11-year-old Sophie and her father Calum travel by bus to a resort in Turkey for their vacation. The 32-year-old divorced single father Calum, played by Irish actor Paul Mescal from 1996, is easily mistaken for Sophie's brother, thanks to his youthful appearance both on and off-screen.
Calum and his mischievous and innocent daughter Sophie embark on a week-long stay at a resort in Turkey. The details of time and place are unmistakable, and this story is intimately connected to the past: pixelated blurs of a large digital camera, retro-era furnishings, rock band music (Blur, Queen & David Bowie), ubiquitous Brits, resort representatives in polo shirts, Fanta soda, arcade games, and Macarena dance—this is the late 90s. In the resort hotel, father and daughter spend leisurely moments by the pool, apply sunscreen to each other, swim together; the father, with a cast on his hand, watches his daughter play board games with a mix of concern and joy, and they share delicious dinners, go mountain climbing, and discuss the legend of Cleopatra while soaking in sulfur baths. This is the simplest and warmest part of the entire film: a charming, vivid, and detailed portrait of a family vacation, a summer holiday before Sophie starts school. On the surface, it appears to be a relaxing and heartwarming family trip. However, the tone of the entire film, like the character of the father Calum, is an iceberg that is half above the surface and submerged below: everything above the water surface is illusory, and what is unseen below is the untouchable, the vastness that cannot be reached.
Upon careful consideration of the details of the plot, it is evident that a melancholic feeling pervades what was supposed to be a happy time for father and daughter. Director Charlotte Wells skillfully uses the DV recording as an image carrier, weaving the past and present together in a virtual and real dance. The rewind, stop, and start sounds of the images linger from the beginning of the film, permeating each scene, reminding the audience that what they see may be distorted due to Sophie's biased memory. Its skillful use of audio-visual language allows the story to shuttle back and forth between memory scenes and present moments, exploring that seemingly happy holiday under the sun, which is, in fact, a quietly penetrating and melancholic memory.
With the quiet, reflective narrative of memories, we, following the perspective of adult Sophie, piece together the recollections, only to discover more than 20 years later that, despite Calum's best efforts to give Sophie a perfect holiday, he seemed to be struggling in anxiety and depression, even attempting suicide.
At the beginning of the film, when the father and daughter arrive at the hotel, they find that their room has only one bed instead of the two Calum originally booked. What's the big deal about father and daughter sleeping in a double bed? Calum doesn't seem to think so. In the middle of the night, after Sophie falls asleep exhausted, he wakes up on a small bed and goes to the balcony in the distance. Through the sliding glass door, you can see Calum struggling to light a cigarette with his right arm in a cast. After taking a puff, his body begins to rhythmically sway back and forth, with his arm moving outward, upward, and downward in a tai chi-like motion. It's unclear what he's contemplating, and the scene maintains a sense of detachment， this is the father's solitary moment, starting only after the child is asleep.
Following the conversation between the father and daughter, we discover that Calum and Sophie's mother are no longer together. It seems they had Sophie when they were relatively young. Now, Calum has moved to the United Kingdom, while the mother and daughter remain in Scotland. This rare vacation reunion between father and daughter is actually a trip to Turkey that Calum can barely afford. Sophie's parents are separated, and she primarily lives with her mother. Calum talks about finding a new place where Sophie would have her own room and might even go into business with someone named "Keith." However, from his tone when discussing all this, it is evident that he is not very confident about the future depicted. There are "clues" indicating that his life did not unfold entirely as he had hoped. He is mistakenly taken for Sophie's brother due to his relatively young age, clearly becoming a father at a young age. Having a child too early disrupted his life plans, and he is still struggling in his career today. During the journey, he carries books on meditation and tai chi, using reading to mask his emotions and practicing tai chi to soothe his anxiety. Rather than being a lifelong hobby, it seems more like a way to avoid anxiety. He appears to have limited financial resources, and during a scuba diving incident, tension arises when Sophie fails to catch the diving goggles. The atmosphere becomes tense because the diving goggles are valuable to Calum, and this anxiety seems to weigh heavily on him.
Compared with her melancholic father, the innocent daughter Sophie shows sensitivity and maturity beyond her years. When Sophie was a child, she was happy when she heard the word "engagement" in a few words, because she hoped that her parents could reconcile. Now she no longer has such expectations, but it's hard for her to understand why her parents still exchange "I love you" even though they are no longer together. She would roll her eyes while her father did Tai Chi, playfully describing it as "doing weird slow motion like a ninja." At the resort, Sophie had a vague awakening of gender consciousness for the first time and experienced the meaning of puberty. She overheard teenagers talking about "sex" in an indifferent manner, and witnessed them kissing selflessly by the swimming pool. This was a world she had never seen carefully, and she came up with the idea of growing up and becoming independent, just like her. Same as those teenagers I met. She even met a boy her age, a boy who seemed to be romantically interested in her, while playing a motorcycle arcade game.
At the same time, the world, love and understanding between father and daughter are so close and so far away. Memory carries this gap, and when the video is paused and started again, certain scenes are repeated from different angles and perspectives, and some seemingly mundane actions, conversations and scenes take on greater significance.
Sophie shares a strong emotional connection with her father and can sensitively perceive his "uneasiness." However, at the age of 11, she doesn't fully comprehend the "moments" her father is going through during the journey. Despite this, she tries her best to comfort him based on her profound understanding of the world. Sophie has the ability to eloquently describe the relationship between space and people. She believes that as long as they exist under the same sky and gaze at the same sun, even if they are not in the same physical space, they are still "together" to some extent. This unique perspective allows Sophie to feel reassured even when separated from her father. However, her father finds this literary language and imagination confusing and incomprehensible. From his perspective, the self-consoling sense of reassurance is fleeting and false. He cannot see his daughter, cannot witness her growing up, cannot play with her, protect her by her side, or listen to her share little secrets. The pain of losing love is what feels "timeless" and eternal to him.
Sophie believes it's wonderful that they can share the same sky, and perhaps the vast and azure sky is what truly connects Sophie and Calum. However, Calum cannot grasp this literary language and imagination. This evident gap is undoubtedly the core of the movie, hinting at the potential closeness and apparent distance between parents and children. Children are insightful, perceptive beings, even if they cannot express it in words. At the same time, a child's perception is elastic; she may sense the anxiety of her parents while also being delighted to make new friends in an arcade game. These two experiences can happen simultaneously in her
During a scuba diving session, Sophie accidentally lost her diving goggles, prompting her father Calum to panic and frantically turn towards the direction where the mask fell. Afterward, Sophie keenly sensed her father's emotional shift. She first verbally apologized and then expressed intimacy through actions. However, Calum, once again, seemed "panicked" by this gesture—because his daughter had discovered his financial difficulties and emotional struggles, aspects he believed he had concealed quite well.
Another gap between father and daughter lies in their different attitudes and interpretations of "age". Sophie, who is approaching puberty, shows unusual interest in things beyond her age. She looks at the teenagers by the swimming pool exuding youthful hormones and wonders what kissing and touching are. It was the first time he tried what a "kiss" was, and he showed his mature resistance to his father's ordinary act of helping him apply sunscreen. She would be curious about what the hookah-smoking couple was doing, and question the adults who were telling their children that smoking was bad while knowingly doing so. She didn't understand why her parents expressed "I love you" to each other even though they were separated. Sophie desperately wants to grow up. Like many children, she believes that adulthood is more exciting than childhood. She is about to enter the age of self-separation and becoming her "own" person. Age for her means wanton youth without any hesitation.
If we assume that age is a natural fear for many people in their thirties, father Calum seems to be more troubled by it than his peers. He is a young father who perhaps never truly intended to have children in his twenties, and as a result, he is forced to shoulder responsibilities, feeling life's twists and turns. When Calum responds to his ex-wife with, "Are you checking up on me?"—is this light banter or does it carry an underlying meaning? In a conversation with a scuba diving instructor, he even mentions being unable to imagine himself living to 40 and expresses surprise at his current thirty-something self. Is this self-deprecating humor, or is it a form of self-loathing? For Calum, age is sometimes a "privilege," and at other times, it feels like a curse. His sensitivity to age reaches a point of vulnerability.
In one scene in the film, Sophie interviews her father Calum with a video camera, asking him about how he celebrated his 11th birthday. Calum immediately becomes visibly displeased and coldly demands that Sophie turn off the camera. After Sophie complies and turns off the camera, she once again demonstrates a level of intelligence beyond her years. She says, "I can record it in my mind camera," and Calum then reluctantly reveals the harsh memories of his 11th birthday: forgotten and dismissed. The cruel truth behind this scene lies in the fact that as adults, not many people seem to remember a specific childhood birthday. Calum's avoidance suggests that his childhood birthdays left him with painfully negative memories, turning birthdays into dark regrets.
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