When I attempt to write criticism, the thing I get most frustrated with is that I never feel like I am making a point. This and any pieces that follow are a way to alleviate that stress by, essentially, removing the expectation entirely. I initially thought about giving this series a self-deprecating title, but I didn't want imply that there was something altogether more thoughtful I was capable of that I was just refusing to work on. I will just write until I get better; unless I don't. Hopefully I can write more criticism this year but I just want to set expectations of quality now.
Aftersun (2022) is a film written and directed by Charlotte Wells. It follows a father, Calum, and daughter, Sophie, as they experience a summer holiday at a resort in Turkey. Sophie in small ways coming of age and Calum struggling to contain a haunting depression. The film has admittedly blossomed in my memory though I still feel there was something small and imperceptible that stopped it completely coming together. I think it was something in the rhythm of the edit, of its pace, but it would require more effort than I think would be useful to anyone to figure out, especially for something that I feel would end up quite personal. It is still an excellent film; the cinematography is beautiful, there are some striking transitions, the performances are excellent, and there is a sequence in a carpet shop that will stick with me for a long time. But I would like to write about something relatively minor, something that I imagine in the grand view of the audience does would not help or hinder one's opinion on the film much at all.
I want to examine the frame story of the piece; that of an adult Sophie reflecting on this holiday and the memories of her father. It is a narrative that exists for only a handful of scenes and not many more shots. I wonder if it is necessary. Now, before going further, I would like to define this term, though know it is not with any permanence. In some modern pop-criticism 'necessity' has become synonymous with plot function in a very calculating and structural way. Obviously I would like to avoid that, so when I write about necessity, what I mean is a scene or shot's ability to convey new information or new feeling, or even to reinforce or reinterpret something that has come before.
The first images we see in Aftersun, accompanied by the digital flutters and mechanical stresses that help define them, are shot through a camcorder. They are recordings filmed by the characters themselves, instantly revealing the footage as physical objects within the world, an object of memory, alongside all the imperfection that implies. I think that us seeing an adult Sophie watching these videos offers nothing more than is implied by the form of the work itself. It is inherently reflective.
The complexity of this act of remembrance is conveyed within the childhood timeline itself in, what I believe, is the most beautiful shot of the film. It is a static shot of a television connected directly to the camcorder, a live feed of Sophie's 'eye' as she talks to her father, their figures half-present in the reflection of a mirror. It is a repetition of the opening shot but projected directly into the world. What is different is that the scene continues after the video is cut off, past the moment where Calum begins to crack after a question about his hopes as a child. I don't think it is as simple as to say that the film wants to call the video entirely insufficient for conveying the moment, but rather that the moment is not entirely contained within the video; that as much is contained either side and that as much is remembered by what butterflies from every gesture, breath, and word left unsaid.
I think this produces a sort of friction because the other side of the frame story is an abstracted sequence of an adult Sophie working her way through bodies and flashing lights in an inky nightclub towards her father. The metaphor here, if I were to use a single word that would never really match the fullness of the image, is that of understanding. As she sees more, as she remembers more, she comes closer and closer to who her Father was. The thing is that adult Sophie's main point of interaction is through her videos of the trip and, taken with their cloudiness as objects of memory, I don't think, by the end, she ends up in a place very different from as when she was a child. Sophie, as a child, in portrayal and performance, is hugely empathetic. She is able to see into her father's struggle and attempts to accommodate it as much as she is able. Yes she tries to help in ways that prove unsuccessful but this is imitated behaviour; as when she tries to drag Calum up to karaoke after he has dragged her to water polo but she is not oblivious. Of course, There is no single cause of Calum's distress or simple lock and key that Sophie missed, so the process of adult Sophie moving through the darkness feels less like one of discovery than of an attunement with herself as a child and what she already knew.
Now, when I began writing this piece, I was pretty firmly in the position that the adult Sophie scenes were unnecessary but the read I just found and the language that I ended up using to define it has given me second thoughts. Rather fittingly, it is the space between that feeds my fascination. So I will go to the biggest convergence of these positions in time, the dance set to Under Pressure. Initially, I thought us knowing this was the 'last dance,' along with the fogged memories that would follow and the floating points in time they would return was sufficient on its own, the scenes of adult Sophie drawing us mostly along the same track. We aren't shown exactly what happens with Calum, when the end comes, how protracted, how abrupt, but it is the gap to Sophie that follows in its wake that is full. We can only imagine what it truly contains; some combination of anger, grief, confusion, and hate but it is all in the faded after-image when the screen cuts out.
I promised you I wouldn't make any point and I think I can safely say I achieved that. Maybe there was some repetition, maybe it is unimportant and everything that is implied within the emotional and temporal gap justifies the frame story itself, offering us a more detailed portrait of Sophie. Either way I think I am further from a designation of necessity than when I started. Maybe, in a few months or a couple years, I'll be writing something and this piece will come back to me and help, and hopefully not just confuse me some more.
Sweet dreams.
~Honeycream