Aftersun is a woman's recollection – through video recordings, memory, and imagination – of the resort holiday she went on with her dad when she was 11 just before, we're led to assume, he committed suicide. This story-inside-the-story is a kind of coming-of-age mixed with a ghost mystery. On one hand there is Sophie's own experience of the holiday, as a girl who wants to act mature but doesn't yet comprehend her queer sexuality; on the other hand, there is her imagined experience of the holiday for her dead father, who she believes was quietly struggling with depression. Each look, gesture, and spoken phrase by the father, perceived naively by the young Sophie, becomes a gnomic clue to his fate. These two themes are intertwined by Sophie's limitation in understanding the pains and desires hidden in the recesses of the mind – her sexuality as a child, now her father's torment – that don’t emerge until later, or maybe never, like scuba goggles at the bottom of an ocean. Visually, Wells tries to express this idea through a lot of insipid symbolism, such as the aforementioned googles, or toothpaste spat on a bathroom mirror in private anger that lingers after the father walks out of frame (please...). The story is supposedly based on Wells' own childhood – to add another layer of sentimentality – but a sense of punctum in the images, that poignant 'prick' of certain images from our youth that makes them stick in our heads years later, is rarely achieved. For the most part it just looks like another A24 movie – more Instagram-like than usual due to its fragmented, stream-of-consciousness form that is ready-made for a "cinematography compilation". What makes the film watchable is its two lead actors who create a realistic and charming simulacrum of a father-daughter relationship.
Score: 2/5
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