Aftersun (2022)

Aftersun is special because it captures the way memory really works: not as neat flashbacks, but as half-remembered textures—sunburnt afternoons, awkward silences, sudden laughter—until the emotional truth quietly comes into focus. Charlotte Wells directs with a gentleness that never pushes, letting Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio build a father-daughter bond that feels lived-in, funny, and fragile, even when something unspoken hums beneath it. The film has a hazy, camcorder-dream vibe—intimate, observant, and quietly devastating—where small moments land with the force of revelation. It isn’t a plot-heavy drama and it asks you to sit with ambiguity, but if you’ve ever looked back at someone you loved and realized you didn’t fully know them, it’s the kind of movie that stays with you like a song you can’t shake.

Aftersun is aiming for something quietly devastating: a daughter piecing together a parent’s private pain from half-remembered moments and camcorder scraps, more felt than explained. It’s beautifully acted (Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio are disarmingly natural) and the atmosphere of a late-90s holiday is spot-on, but the film is deliberately elusive—key emotions arrive through glances, fragments, and abstract interludes rather than clear story beats. If you need tidy answers, explicit backstory, or a plot that tells you what to think, this can feel cryptic and even frustrating, like it’s withholding on purpose. If you’re comfortable sitting in ambiguity and letting meaning accumulate slowly, it can land with a heavy, lingering punch.