This is our last dance: My thoughts on Aftersun

Spoilers for Aftersun (2022) below and mention of depression and suicide.

I saw Aftersun (dir. Charlotte Wells) last year by myself. I didn’t log it on Letterboxd or really talk about it until right now because it affected me profoundly, more than any other film I’ve watched in the past year or so. I rewatched it today after the Oscar nominees were announced, and Paul Mescal was nominated for Best Actor in this film, which he absolutely deserves! But now I feel like I can finally talk about it.

Aftersun follows Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her dad Calum (Paul Mescal) on a holiday in Turkey and we see most of the trip through the videos they took on their camcorder. We learn later that Sophie is watching these videos back years later as an adult. We watch their trip together and are immersed in their father-daughter dynamic that feels so authentic and captivating. We see Sophie living out her 11-year-old adolescence alongside Calum, who feels adrift during adulthood, trying to do his best for Sophie. He’s obviously struggling with his mental health but we only get short or fragmented clips of this. He’s reading meditation and tai chi books, running into the ocean in the middle of the night and drinking instead of knowing where Sophie is. Calum is extremely elusive and we don’t get to know much about him, besides that he is Sophie’s dad and he left Scotland where Sophie lives with her mom. There’s scenes with him standing on a ledge and sobbing in the corner and walking in front of a bus. A lot of scenes we just see him from the back. We don’t see a lot of him facing the camera, which shows his elusiveness. Sophie is young and can’t fully grasp what’s going on with him. Something is off but you can’t put your finger on it when you’re 11-years-old. In one scene, Sophie talks about how tired she is and how she feels like her bones don’t work while Calum is brushing his teeth and while he’s listening to her saying this, he spits on himself in the mirror. I’m not sure whether I interpret it as he sees that in himself and hates it or he’s feeling upset because she’s starting to experience the same things that he experiences. Either way, he’s struggling to keep it together. We see this also in transition clips of Calum in a dark room at what seems like a rave with strobing lights. He’s trying to get out but seemingly has nowhere to go. We then see an older Sophie trying to get to him. They embrace and he sinks. The very last scene of the movie is Calum putting away the camcorder and walking out the doors back into the rave. Whether Calum dies by suicide or just leaves on his own accord, we can assume that Sophie never sees him again. The Turkish holiday was their last dance.

Everything about this movie was so delicate and beautifully done. The cinematography and direction were the most unique I've seen in years. It’s one of those films that makes me sit back and think about how much I love films and the emotions they pull out of me. The most creative aspect that impacted me the most about Aftersun was in many shots we see Calum in a reflection, in the mirror or in the window or on the TV screen, indicative of how Sophie is reflecting back on her memories and he’s no longer around or part of her life. This framing of these shots completely devastated me more than anything else. I felt these scenes, looking back on moments in your childhood that you don’t remember or didn’t grasp what was truly going on, in my bones. The concept of realizing your parents are not just your parents, but that they are their own people, earnestly trying their best with what they’ve got. What are memories and do we remember them correctly when we are children? Sophie thinks she knows her dad, but looking back, she has to learn to reconcile the image of her dad she saw when she was a child with the man she sees now in reflection that she didn’t truly know.

One of the final scenes of the film is Sophie and Calum dancing to Under Pressure by David Bowie and Queen on their holiday. I’ve never really paid attention to the lyrics of the song but it leaves a final reminder that encapsulates the entire feeling left by this film: “Love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night.”