“...And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves.”
“Under Pressure” shows up at a vital moment in Aftersun, the striking debut feature from Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells. It is unlike the other needle-drops of this late 90s period piece that reference fluke staples of the era like “Tubthumping” and of course an obligatory “Macarena”. It’s a more timeless track that speaks perceptibly to Calum Paterson (Paul Mescal), who has been silently struggling through depression and deep mental woe for the entire movie. Perhaps he feels understood by the lyrics, relieved by them, or else it’s just a nostalgic song through which he can authentically bond with his daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio), to whom he’s been emotionally distant. It’s always been a curious song to me, dealing with heavy and sombre themes, but in such a lively, upbeat and enthusiastic cadence. That is how it works as such an effective catharsis for Calum and Sophie, and one that can only be at best bittersweet.
It must be extremely difficult to have a child so young. I don’t know from experience, but I did know of a couple in my first year of college who had a baby. That would have been about the same age as Calum and his unnamed ex-wife when Sophie was born, and being a father for the duration of his twenties -the financial and psychological ramifications of that have taken a deep toll. At least that is what seems to be at the root of his troubles, our perception largely limited to the point-of-view of Sophie, only beginning to comprehend adult subjects of sex or drugs, to say nothing of the kind of complexes her father is going through that even he doesn’t fully understand.
Wells’ movie about the yearning for emotional connection between a young parent and child is the saddest movie I’ve seen all year, but also one of the most blisteringly poignant. She calls it an “emotionally autobiographical” work, and that definitely comes through in her creative choices around how she frames the story through Sophie’s subjectivity -interspersing the narrative occasionally with camcorder footage for posterity, subliminal bursts of psychological manifestations, and a few spare moments of Calum on his own that can’t be terribly reliable. Of course, much of the movie itself may be up to interpretation, depicting a vacation to a Turkish resort by this father and daughter who don’t see each other regularly. The veneer of memory it eventually becomes clear is an unavoidable element, and yet for as much as it might cloud, its’ greater purpose is to reveal -specifically to Sophie a vindication of her perceptiveness and an even greater understanding in her maturity of how her dad was struggling.
It is beautiful how Wells says so much without saying anything at all. Sure, small lines of dialogue, minute observations allude to Calum’s financial instability and mental strain, but then there are just those scenes of him silent, his mind in a void, his emotions quietly eating away at him. I think in particular of an early scene where he smokes out on the balcony while Sophie is asleep in the hotel room, breathing heavy for a good minute, before the shot cuts to that same heavy breathing emanating off of him asleep in the early morning light. In another he simply gazes at the pattern on a meditation rug for a long period of time before deciding to purchase it, in contradiction to an earlier statement to Sophie, in spite of its’ high price. There’s one sequence where he sits on the edge of his bed naked sobbing profusely in some kind of anxiety, the cause of which we’re not privy to. These are all scenes in which Sophie is absent, but we trust there’s good reason that they are envisioned, especially going off of moments in her recordings such as when she asks him as he approaches his 31st birthday where he thought he would be now when at her age -he registers the question blankly and doesn’t give an answer.
Delivering here a profound and vividly nuanced performance, there can no longer be any doubts about Paul Mescal’s talents. He remarkably plays Calum to a pitch of brooding mystery not too dissimilar to his role in God’s Creatures earlier this year, but giving off an entirely different effect. His solitary sadness stings with immense resonance, the hardship of keeping up appearances, and yet the genuine love detected there for Sophie and her well-being. He is purely good-intentioned, but psychologically incapable of rising to external challenges in light of his nebulous internal battles. It’s a captivating performance and ought to nab Mescal an Oscar nomination. Frankie Corio though also is astounding, playing with an authentic curious uncertainty her various encounters with older youths at the resort, a boy her age who shares an interest in arcade games, and just the flickers of teen sexuality she is privy to on this holiday. These are coming-of-age movie staples, but there’s a rawness with which Corio takes them on, even more pronounced in her relationship with her father, where she tries to engage and communicate with him to awkward ends -they are on two very different wavelengths, her desire for enthusiasm contrasting with his inability to summon any. And when she arranges a karaoke performance, a duet of “Losing My Religion” and he utterly refuses to partake, the pain and embarrassment of her performing herself is deeply palpable and heart-wrenching.
Meanwhile Wells directs with a visionary confidence that is, in contrast to the dourness of much of the film, so thrilling. Her interspersing of home movie footage with a moody recollection of 90s adolescence reminds me of Jonah Hill’s mid90s, but far more rich and soulful. Her window into the past is as intended more defined by emotion than nostalgia-induced aesthetic. The consciously limited perspective means watching the movie you sometimes feel like a child again, aching for explanations that can’t be given. And yet that adult lens permeates, manifested in moments of still contemplation and that strobe-lit story in the margins, in which an adult Sophie attempts to reach Calum in a rave-like atmosphere, but finds she cannot do it. Wells leads with her heart and her eye for cinematic expression, which accounts for the movies’ tantalizing quality. The ending scene, a relatively innocuous moment of everyday parting, is drawn so haunting and powerfully here, connecting links of what we’ve been seeing as though it were a twist -nothing short of brilliant.
Charlotte Wells has announced herself as a distinctly sharp new filmmaking voice, and indeed the proficiency with which she brings to life her debut feature can’t help but recall in even a slight degree that other great first movie from a director called Wells. Aftersun is a melancholy beauty that taps into depression and sadness from a new angle; a stark picture of a complicated love as defined by memory and truth -each as pertinent to its’ image. Quietly, intelligently, the most provoking drama of its’ kind in ages.
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