When was the last time you saw your father? is a question that can mean radically different things depending on when it’s asked. It could be as simple as Has your dad gone to the store yet, or Maybe you should give him a call. But it’s also a way of asking How long has it been? Does it still hurt? The difference lies in that last, the shift from recency to finality that can happen in an instant, and the last time becomes the last time.
Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, her debut feature, is about the last time she saw her father, and part of its power is the refusal to define exactly what that means. Set at a Turkish seaside resort in the late 1990s, the movie follows 11-year-old Sophie (newcomer Frankie Corio) and her father Calum (Normal People heartthrob Paul Mescal) over the course of an emotionally fraught vacation.
Calum and Sophie’s mother have recently split up, and he’s hanging on by a thread, desperate to give his daughter a memorable experience as he struggles with financial strain and apparent depression. Wells has declined to specify exactly which parts of the story are drawn from her life, but she admitted in a post about the film that while most films are personal, Aftersun is “more than even those most,” and pictures of her and her father at the time bear an uncanny resemblance to Corio and Mescal.
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