«Aftersun», a delicate film on time, in the father and daughter relationship (score 8)- Corriere.it

Aftersun, the first work written and directed by the talented and inspired English director Charlotte Wells, born in ’87, a delicate film about time, the one with a capital letter, which passes without leaving an apparent trace at the moment but which one comes to terms with afterwards. Aftersun the almost posthumous story of a relationship between a divorced father whose problems can be sensed (the good Paul Mescal, known in Gyllenhaal’s Dark Daughter) and his 11-year-old pre-adolescent daughter who spends a holiday with him in a resort village in Turkey, sad as these places are where cheerfulness is compulsory, therefore fake.

But the relationship between father and daughter is true that are discovered and rediscovered and it is understood, through video excerpts and a hermetic but not too much metaphysical ending, that everything we see will be the object of regret and nostalgia for the little girl who, having become a woman, will look at the photos and videos in the swimming pool, at the restaurant, on a trip, as a precious memory of the life lost with his father. And the idea that the title Aftersun is precisely a reference to the after-sun that caresses and heals the skin from sunstroke. The film, despite winning the Semaine de la critique at Cannes in 1922, did not have the good fortune to be released in theaters, which now give a truly laughable economic revenue: so go and look for it on the Mubi platform which is a small paradise for cinephiles, given the titles from the history of cinema, the one that does not begin with Star Wars or with Tarantino.

Aftersun a delicate impressionist fresco about feelings that vary quickly, settle in the heart but then if you are not careful, they run away: in 102 minutes it seems that nothing important happens, but you have to read the story with painful hindsight, of which the director only gives us some taste, preferring to play with the evolving affections of the two very good protagonists, the aforementioned Mescal who only betrays his inner suffering in one scene, and the very young Frankie Corio, chosen from 800 auditions. We don’t know about the other 799 sad returns home, but the chosen one has a natural vitality and melancholy, imbued in a single feeling that accompanies her during the duration of this holiday which is also a cheerful interval from the severe attentions of her mother, before starting again with homework.

Of course, there are other similar films to draw on, first of all the beautiful and neglected Nowhere special by Pasolini but also Somewhere by Sofia Coppola, Golden Lion 2010. Webb’s film delves delicately into the intimate parts of sensitivity, offers remorse & grudges in balance, plays on the give and take of two consciences so united and so different by age. In fact, the protagonist is Time, the Proustian one, which we do not notice as it passes but only later, at the last party of the Guermantes when we see the signs of old age. The director here doses the uncertainties, disappointments and ambiguities of the relationship, always putting a sweetness in the foreground which will inevitably be lost over the years and which will remain in the holiday films, even the one in which the Macarena is danced. Slightly faded images that we see in their making and becoming in the joy of the little girl and in a father who would like to correspond and often succeeds but who has something inside that eats him up. But not a sad film, like life, without the boring parts as Hitchcock said, but including all the lumps in my throat.