Table Of Content
- Aftersun review – luminous father-daughter drama starring Paul Mescal
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- Q&A: Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells is one of the most promising voices in British cinema
- Editing this film was more nerve-wracking than ever
- optional screen reader
- Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio on Aftersun: “It’s rare to see a single-parent drama where the centre point is love”
Wells’ father gave her the same kind of camera as a teenager. As Hollywood quietens for the holidays, she has been afforded a rare moment to reflect “on a wild and wonderful six months” since "Aftersun" premiered in Critics’ Week at Cannes. The film depicts 11-year-old Sophie (newcomer Frankie Corio) and her young dad Calum (Paul Mescal) on vacation in Turkey in the late 1990s, told subtly through the point of view of Sophie as an adult 20 years later. The most difficult moment in my interview with Charlotte Wells has arrived.
Aftersun review – luminous father-daughter drama starring Paul Mescal
The 35mm footage is spread throughout the film, showing the audience more intimate parts of the father-daughter dynamic from Sophie's perspective. The film shows a vulnerable side of this dynamic, with Calum's battle with depression as a dark side, as well as the struggle of living apart from your father. Adult Sophie is, as she was when she was young, slowly figuring out who her father was as a person, rather than a father. Charlotte WellsCharlotte Wells was born in 1987 in Scotland and is a filmmaker based in New York. Wells graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Classics from King’s College London and then a Master of Arts from Oxford University. After, she worked in finance and ran an agency for people working in film with a friend in London.
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Wells prioritizes mood, treating every beat’s pacing as “a delicate thing,” and her screenplay is packed with subtle camera movements rather than expository conversations. Scenes of Calum alone, for instance, come with unexpected angles—the camera peers up at him on a balcony railing or zooms in uncomfortably close as he breathes with a wet towel on his face—and many of them are cut short. Their strange brevity underscores the adult Sophie’s discomfort. She’d rather not think too deeply about Calum’s behavior when she wasn’t around.
Q&A: Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells is one of the most promising voices in British cinema
He was compelled to become responsible, but he struggled to keep up with it. He had neither a satisfying personal life nor a successful professional life. He was drifting from one job to another, trying new things without knowing if they would ever work or not. At one point in the “Aftersun,” he even mentions how he never thought he would make it to 30 and that he could never imagine being 40. It was only because of Sophie that he returned from the beach to the hotel room that night. She was his reason to not completely give up, to return and carry on with his responsibility.
Editing this film was more nerve-wracking than ever
Before starting her career in the film industry as a producer, Wells helped run Digital Orchard, a company specialising in film, finishing images, developing film and digital imaging. Wells was a fellow at the 2020 Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Labs with her feature film debut Aftersun, which premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim. She received many accolades as a breakthrough director and appeared on numerous year-end lists. Aftersun received an Academy Award nomination for Paul Mescal's performance. The above makes it sound like Aftersun is a heartwarming story about family, but it takes an unexpected turn as the film progresses.
The film follows a young father, Calum (played by Normal People’s Paul Mescal), and his 11-year-old daughter, Sophie (the newcomer Frankie Corio), who are spending a week-long vacation on the coast of Turkey. Sophie treasures her time with Calum, who doesn’t live in Scotland with the rest of her family and who, at 31, with boyish features, is often mistaken for her older brother. This vacation is framed through the perspective of present-day Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall), who appears occasionally throughout the movie. Now an adult, she’s sifting through her memories, hoping to better understand the man she was so dazzled by a lifetime ago. Some of those memories are reliable, documented on camcorder footage from their trip. What’s clear is that Sophie can’t shake their week in Turkey.
Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio on Aftersun: “It’s rare to see a single-parent drama where the centre point is love”
The shoot was not without its hiccups, including the aforementioned dance sequence. Wells shot it in a UK tomato factory with the help of a New York choreographer who had 45 minutes to rehearse the sequence in advance. After the shoot, they realized that the strobe light was out of sync with the audio. They ended up reshooting the entire thing last December in London, only to find that the lighting was all off. The actors were wisely given two weeks to bond before shooting began, resulting in an intensely authentic rapport that seems to radiate from the screen.
In 'Aftersun,' Charlotte Wells makes a shattering debut - The Associated Press
In 'Aftersun,' Charlotte Wells makes a shattering debut.
Posted: Wed, 19 Oct 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The fear of aging seems entangled with his depression and anxiety about his life. In some moments, it even seems like Calum would love to switch places with Sophie and have the ability to do it all over again, so he'd have more time to get it right. Calum walks away, not going back into the real world, but into Sophie’s memories. You see the strobe lights coming from behind the door, and this seems to imply that this becomes Sophie’s final active memory of her father. It’s the final night of Sophie (Frankie Corio) and Calum’s (Paul Mescal) Turkey vacation. They celebrate with some ice cream and some dancing to “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie (it’s one of the best movie dance scenes of 2022).
We see Calum and Sophie going through opposite reactions in their journey of aging. Like many kids, she sees being an adult as a much more exciting possibility than childhood. However, he eventually escapes and falls away from adult Sophie before she turns into a child. Fortunately, though, our dates shifted and we still hadn’t quite cracked the casting of Calum yet, so he came back into consideration. He put in so much work on set to build a genuine connection with Frankie, and I think I could see from the first meeting we had that he cares deeply about the film.
Making it, though, meant toiling over every detail, carefully sculpting the film’s precise but organic flow. “I wrote so many openings and so many endings,” Wells sighs. Wells’ film education continued at New York University where she made several shorts. Even in her student films you can see an uncommon balance of subtlety and revelation. In Wells’ films, there’s often a surface reality and a hidden, more painful one. In “Laps,” which was inspired by a similar experience Wells had on the subway on her way to NYU, a young woman is sexually assaulted on a crowded train where no one notices — or, at least, no one seems to notice.
The tapes prompted reflection about how memory and film intertwine. Wells has sometimes spoken obliquely about the personal roots of Aftersun, describing it as “emotionally autobiographical”. But many details of the film have profound connections with her life.
So unfolds Tuesday, the first short film by the 35-year-old Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells, and one that bears many of the hallmarks found in her shattering feature debut, Aftersun. It, too, radiates with the glow of memory while coursing with an undertow of grief. This scene is juxtaposed with images of adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) seeing her dad dancing at a rave. Then she holds him as the film flashes between child Sophie dancing and holding her father close and adult Sophie holding him so he cannot leave.
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