First-time director Charlotte Wells looks set to shake up this year’s awards race.
This year’s Cannes Film Festival was packed with so many films, it’s hard to know which one to watch. Between Ruben Östlund’s Palme D’Or winning satire Triangle of Sadness, David Cronenberg’s long-awaited return to body horror in Crimes of the Future, and Park Chan-wook’s film noir Oscar submission Decision to Leave, this awards season will be a battle between the festival’s best. However, the dark horse of the festival and of the upcoming awards race is not from these internationally acclaimed veteran auteurs, but from a first-time director named Charlotte Wells. Her debut feature Aftersun has quietly and steadily been blowing critics away with its earnest story, heartbreaking realism, and brilliant performances. Telling the story of the emotional roller coaster that comes from a vacation on a Turkish resort shared by a father and daughter, Aftersun is a revelation.
The most established actor in the film is Paul Mescal, who is known for his role in the miniseries adaptation Normal People, playing Calum, the young father. Starring alongside him as his 11-year-old daughter Sophie is Frankie Corio. Corio has no previous credits to her name but beat out 800 other applicants for the role. It has paid off as Corio’s performance is being praised as one of the best of her generation. Rounding out the cast is Celia Rowlson-Hall who plays Sophie as an adult. Rowlson-Hall made a name for herself as a dancer and choreographer who worked on the HBO show Girls as well as music videos for artists like Alicia Keys. She has also directed several shorts as well as a feature called MA in 2015.
For anybody who can’t wait to see this father-daughter story, here’s everything we know about how, when, and where you can watch this new family drama. But first, here is the official synopsis for Aftersun:
At a fading vacation resort, 11-year-old Sophie treasures rare time together with her loving and idealistic father, Calum. Twenty years later, Sophie’s tender recollections of their last holiday become a powerful and heartrending portrait of their relationship.
Aftersun will be released in theaters by A24 on October 21, 2022.
Unfortunately, Aftersun will not be available for streaming on the same day as its theatrical release and there is no news on what streaming service it will end up on. However, A24 has signed an exclusive output deal with Showtime Networks in late 2019 to stream and air all their non-Apple movies released theatrically through November 1, 2022. This means that Aftersun should appear on Showtime and/or its affiliated channels after it leaves theaters.
Since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, critics have been in love with this quiet but effective portrait of a moment in youth, with the movie currently holding a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Collider’s own Chase Hutchinson has described Aftersun as “one of the most sublime films of the year so far" and said that it "reflects on how our memories, no matter how much we hold on to them, can be lost to time.” Hutchinson gave the movie an A+ rating in his review of the film.
Much of the praise has gone to the direction of the film, as well as the performances of the film’s leads Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal, who seem to be on track to win a slew of nominations this awards season. Based on the critical reception, Aftersun is shaping up to be one of A24’s best films in recent years. Read on for an excerpt from our review of Aftersun or check out the full article here.
There is an audacity to much of the way it all shifts into being more emotionally ephemeral, but there is no better way to capture the elusive emotional states being expressed. The way the visuals all dance across the screen in flashes of brilliance that strip away the barriers between form and feeling until they become one is nothing short of spectacular.
To help you out while you wait for your local theater to screen this masterpiece of contemporary independent British cinema, check out these three other films that explore the beauty and difficulty of being a single parent:
The Florida Project: Director Sean Baker has established himself as one of the most sympathetic directors of his generation, focusing his gaze on the oft-forgotten of society. So far, The Florida Project is the pinnacle of his career. The film follows Moonee, a six-year-old girl living in a hotel near Disney World with her young mother. Together with her friends from the hotel, Moonee goes on adventures and gets into trouble. Through her innocent eyes, however, we see the dangerous and sometimes brutal world that her mother is a part of. Never the moralist, Baker does not judge any of his characters and instead presents these characters' flaws and motivations with care and understanding. Without a doubt, this movie will change the way you think or feel about the people society often deems to be criminals or immoral.
Kramer vs Kramer: Kramer vs Kramer may be old-fashioned, but it was one of the first films to attempt to portray single parenthood in an authentic way. The film begins when Joanna (Meryl Streep) informs her longtime husband Ted (Dustin Hoffman) that the strain of her life as a housewife has become too much and she is leaving him and her son behind. In the wake of this explosive event, Ted, a workaholic, has to become a father to his son for the first time in his life. The first half of the film explores the everyday struggles of single parenthood, the latter half focuses on the custody battles that too often lead to the unnecessary vilification of one parent over the other. Featuring Academy Award-winning performances from both Streep and Hoffman, this 1970s classic is a must-see!
20th Century Women: Though 20th Century Women did not get the Oscar attention it deserved, it will certainly go down as one of the best films of the decade. After making Beginners, a film examining his late-in-life relationship with his gay father, Mike Mills made 20th Century Women based on his teenage relationship with his mother. The film follows 55-year-old Dorothea (Annette Bening), a single mother, who in the hopes of better understanding her son and helping him, enlists a photographer boarding at her home as well as a teenage girl he is enamored with to help her raise him. It’s a beautiful and pensive story about what it takes to raise a child and what it costs to truly love someone.
I am Sofia Sheehan. I am a writer for Collider and have previously written for Boathouse Pictures. I also run a blog dedicated to Latin American film at www.thecinelatinoblog.com! I love Richard Linklater, Pedro Almodovar, and Asghar Farhadi!
How to Watch Aftersun – Collider
