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I needed something to match the rhythm of the dance scene and it irrefutably worked. But because we’d avoided that in the film for the most part, we figured we could get away with it. It felt like a gift to the viewer, like here’s a little bit more of a hint. It gives you closure that you are correct in the direction your mind has been spiraling. Their holiday came to an end, and Sophie remembered how her father had the broadest smile as he danced to a piece of music.
Director Charlotte Wells on her debut Aftersun — the most lauded British film of the year
Over the past decade, the 35-year-old Scottish filmmaker attended film school with business aspirations, directed a handful of short films, and produced a low-budget feature. By the time her feature-length debut “Aftersun” made waves at Cannes, scored distribution with A24, and established her as a major new filmmaking talent, she had been tinkering with the project for years. “Aftersun,” which A24 releases in select theaters Friday, stars newcomer Frankie Corio as 11-year-old Sophie who’s traveling with her father, Calum (Paul Mescal), on a summer vacation in Turkey.
Editing this film was more nerve-wracking than ever
But every step is a powerful chance to dance with the impossible. Young Charlotte flashed a sweet smile towards her brother Louis as he made his Easter service debut alongside his mother, the Princess of Wales, in April 2023. Princess Charlotte could be seen holding hands with her father, Prince William, and was photographed casting a furtive glance at Louis - no doubt watching out for any cheeky moments in the spotlight. “While I was writing the story, I became aware of conventions I was working with or against,” says Wells. “The single-father/daughter relationship wasn’t a relationship I’d seen. That was part of what inspired me to make it, as I felt I was exploring new territory.
Q&A: Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells is one of the most promising voices in British cinema
But as a little girl, Sophie understood her father’s condition and apologized to him when she lost the expensive glasses, he had bought to use underwater. Calum was taken aback; he had always believed that he was successful in hiding his troubles from his daughter. As a father, he did not want Sophie to think less of him because of his financial constraints. He tried ways to deal with his depressive state of mind; he carried books on meditation and Tai Chi on the trip and even practiced Tai Chi whenever he found the time or quietness for it. Charlotte Wells’ subtle yet mesmerizing debut feature film, “Aftersun,” is an introspective exploration of one girl’s relationship with her late father. Charlotte Wells’ breakout moment has been a long time coming.
More on Aftersun
Scrappy DV-cam footage offers apparently concrete evidence of the interactions between Sophie and Calum, with both roles being performed with quite breathtaking naturalism. Yet Aftersun is constructed as a very personal recollection, filtered through a haze of memory and imagination by the now-adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) looking back on things she didn’t really understand at the time. That tension between fact and fiction – between recorded and remembered events – draws us deep into the drama, causing us to examine every frame as if searching for clues to a hidden truth that remains tantalisingly elusive. It often seems as if the real story is playing out beyond the edges of the frame, dancing in the shadows beyond the confines of the screen.
Memory and grief are at the heart of this year's best cinema - Little White Lies
Memory and grief are at the heart of this year's best cinema.
Posted: Mon, 21 Nov 2022 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Sometimes it meant really talking through the intention of what she was saying. But, every so often, she surprised us in the best ways possible with her performance in the film. “I spent six months pretending to rewrite but in actual fact just spellchecking it over and over again,” she said. Aftersun, on the surface at least, follows a thirty-ish father and his 11-year-old daughter on a humdrum package holiday to Turkey. Calum and Sophie spend their days sunbathing and swimming, eating and drinking, little more. What fascinates is how Wells frames the everyday to reveal a subtext of which Sophie herself is only dimly aware.
Actividad - Interval 36. Charlotte Wells - Tuesday and Aftersun - Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Actividad - Interval 36. Charlotte Wells - Tuesday and Aftersun.
Posted: Thu, 16 Mar 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
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.
How Does Aftersun End?
It would sometimes come inconveniently when we were in the rhythm and in the middle of shooting something — but it also forced us to be present. If Frankie ever needed help to get through something, it was really easy to push all of that out of my mind and super nice to have a reason to. NYU alum Charlotte Wells speaks to WSN on directing her first feature film, working with actors Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio, and her cinematic influences. As the five-star reviews and awards nominations pile up, Wells is allowing herself some space to take it all in before planning her next project.
But during Telluride, I was reminded of it as a tangible thing again, and I’ve tried to hold that feeling with me since. Corio and Mescal had two weeks in Turkey to get to know each other before filming began, and their easy rapport on screen is a thing of beauty. The Normal People star, who described the role as a “dress rehearsal for being a dad”, was given a brief backstory for Calum, then granted space to make the character his own.
Back in 2021, the young Princess was with her doting mother, Princess Kate, and she was her eyes and ears when she and her brothers were watching the Pageant on the last day of Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee Celebrations. While a fictional story, Wells has admitted that parts of her life have crept into the film. It wasn’t popular in Scotland then, so I think it was unusual.
I made Aftersun in a vacuum with my friends and then it reaches people and makes them feel strongly. People want the connection between artist and art to be so strong. It’s funny hearing people describe it as my memory because that it truly is not. The events that were in the script that were closely based on a conversation or an interaction – many of them aren’t in the final film. I think that’s because I am keen to serve the film and not my own past and whatever I’m exorcising with my own past is still the core of the film. And that’s a really easy thing to admit because, as I said, this to me was a form of expression and that is what I was ultimately expressing.
There is an openness and language around mental health in younger people that didn’t exist when I was a teenager. In recalling his presence, Sophie feels her father’s absence, yet only by delving so deeply into the past can she feel the intimacy they shared. Wells illustrates that tension in a series of striking, surreal sequences set at a rave. The adult Sophie imagines picking her way through a crowd toward a dancing Calum, struggling to reach and hold on to him. These scenes are lit by a flickering strobe that breaks up their movements and forces the viewer to join Sophie, to fill in the gaps between images alongside her, in order to develop a full picture. Aftersun understands that closing the inevitable distance between yourself and the ones who raised you is a never-ending pursuit.
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