Aftersun

    Aftersun
    2022

    Synopsis

    Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between miniDV footage as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't.

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    Cast

    • Paul MescalCalum
    • Frankie CorioSophie
    • Brooklyn ToulsonMichael
    • Celia Rowlson-HallAdult Sophie
    • Sally MesshamBelinda
    • Ayşe ParlakTeen Girl 1
    • Sophia LamanovaTeen Girl 2
    • Spike FearnOlly
    • Harry PerdiosToby
    • Frank CorioOcean Park Father

    Recommendations

    • 100

      The Guardian

      With remarkable confidence, [Wells] just lets her movie unspool naturally, like a haunting and deceptively simple short story. The details accumulate; the images reverberate; the unshowy gentleness of the central relationship inexorably deepens in importance.
    • 100

      Time Out

      Aftersun flows like a fondly remembered memory that’s been replayed endlessly, as if trying to find an important detail that might explain what happened. The easy pace of Wells’s direction brings out the best in her central performers, and the chemistry between Mescal and Corio plays out effortlessly. The light moments between them are warm and the darker ones linger heavily
    • 100

      TheWrap

      That a director can summon such emotional maturity paired with grand narrative originality in her first outing, particularly working from a deeply personal standpoint, astounds. Wells, a forward-thinking artist, invites into a vortex of feelings and sensations that fully exploits the language of cinema for its gorgeously humanistic pursuit.
    • 100

      CineVue

      Wells’ debut is a frankly astonishing work which will leave a lasting impression.
    • 91

      The Film Stage

      Aftersun is a beautiful film, albeit one with too many endings, brimming with inner life and creativity, and worthy of comparison to Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher and other debuts of that ilk.
    • 90

      The Hollywood Reporter

      Charlotte Wells’ sharp and tender Aftersun is the rare father-and-child drama that leaves you wondering who the dad will grow up to be.
    • 90

      Variety

      Aftersun thus works elegantly as a kind of dual coming-of-age study, perfectly served by Mescal’s signature brand of softboi gentleness — here shown maturing and creasing into more hardened, troubled masculinity — and the vitality of Corio, whose deft, lovely performance braids both authentic exuberance and a girlishness that feels more performed, as if for the benefit of her dad.
    • 80

      Screen Daily

      While attention, fairly, will go to the work’s visual and tonal acuity, Wells’ measured but relentless probing, her careful peeling away of the layers of this intimate piece, mark her out as one of the most promising new voices in British cinema in recent years.

    Seen by

    • bee