After­sun – first-look review

The open­ing shot of Char­lotte Wells’ dolor­ous chron­i­cle of a ​’90s dad­dy-daugh­ter sun hol­i­day sees fun-lov­ing teen Sophie (Francesca Corio) point­ing a DV cam­corder at her father (Paul Mescal) as he bops on the lit­tle bal­cony of a low-rent resort hotel. She jok­ing­ly asks him what he did for his 11^th birth­day, and the mood instant­ly turns sour: he stern­ly asks her to switch off the camera.

This sug­ges­tion of fes­ter­ing anx­i­ety and omni­scient per­son­al demons cours­es through the ensu­ing sto­ry, as the miss-matched pair polite­ly attempt to enjoy their time on the Turk­ish riv­iera among sim­i­lar­ly-inclined ex-pat rev­ellers, even if there’s lit­tle to do except drink local lager and pump lira into arcade machines and pool tables

Wells keeps nar­ra­tive con­text to a min­i­mum, which is both a bless­ing and a curse. The process of watch­ing After­sun involves a tax­ing trea­sure hunt for clues as to why, exact­ly, Sophie and her on-edge dad are tak­ing this not-very-relax­ing break togeth­er. A repeat­ed flash­back to an obscure encounter at a rave seems to sug­gest that Sophie was pos­si­bly the result of a moment of drugged-up eupho­ria, though her moth­er remains an absence in both phys­i­cal terms and as talk­ing point.

There are also a cou­ple of flash for­wards of two old­er women with a baby, who are watch­ing the DV cam footage on their flatscreen – the sug­ges­tion being that this is adult Sophie wal­low­ing – for rea­sons unknown – in nos­tal­gia for her trag­ic pops.

Yet, the film is trag­i­cal­ly one-note. Even though Wells attempts to avoid demon­stra­tive ges­tures and dia­logue, Mescal just doesn’t quite have the chops as an actor to bot­tle up the emo­tion in a way that brings an essen­tial air of mys­tery to his char­ac­ter. The stilt­ed man­ner in which he deliv­ers his dia­logue, plus the reg­u­lar deploy­ment of ner­vous facial twitch­es, are con­stant reminders of his inter­per­son­al short­falls as a father, and the film stead­fast­ly refus­es to move beyond that some­what minor rev­e­la­tion. It’s actu­al­ly all there in the open­ing scene if you’re watch­ing close­ly enough.

Visu­al­ly, the film opts for over­cast skies and a notice­ably spar­tan resort – shots of dis­used water chutes and depop­u­lat­ed beach bars serve to enhance the feel­ing of coiled ennui and lone­li­ness. There’s almost some­thing vague­ly sur­re­al about this place: it’s like a ghost resort; or maybe just off-sea­son? The pair are con­stant­ly telling each oth­er what a great time they’re hav­ing, yet that’s nev­er evi­dent from the scenes we’re privy to. From all angles, this appears like a very dull and pained hol­i­day, and it’s not that much fun to observe.

The sav­ing grace is Corio who, in a superb and mem­o­rable debut film per­for­mance, brings some much-need­ed nat­u­ral­ism and grace to pro­ceed­ings. She man­ages to strike a tone of exter­nal lev­i­ty and good-humour that actu­al­ly con­ceals the mess of inter­nal anx­i­eties about love, sex, school, her future, and what’s up with her clear­ly-depressed dad.

It’s a shame that After­sun opts to remain in the same gear through­out in its fair­ly hum­drum psy­cho­log­i­cal inquiry of dashed dreams and stunt­ed futures, as who knows what Corio could’ve unleashed were things to have ratch­eted up into sec­ond, or even third gear.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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