Running TimeOne of memory’s cruellest tricks is to remind us that we often didn’t know we were living through our most significant moments. That unkindness is at the heart of this wonderful, opaquely moving debut feature from Charlotte Wells. Paul Mescal is convincingly Scottish as Calum, a youngish father holidaying in Turkey with Sophie , his 11-year-old daughter, during the late 1990s. That scenario is redolent with potential threat.
None of this could hope to work so well without strong performances from the two leads. Despite being hampered by lockdown conditions, Mescal and Corio somehow established an uncannily firm connection. Separated from the child’s mother, though apparently still on decent terms, Calum comes across more as an older brother than as a father, but we do see his efforts – in very millennial fashion – to establish a benign hierarchy.
Aftersun is about noticing what we didn’t notice at the time . All this is implied. Corio’s staggeringly natural and unforced performance gives us an intelligent child who notices when things are awry but isn’t yet mature enough to assemble the ominous pieces into a forbidding whole. Aftersun is a sad film mostly concerned with a young person being happy.