Aftersun, unexplained sadness

Aftersun give an after-sadness. I felt relaxed but terrified when I watched the movie, and then the sadness strike after. Sophie had been an adult when she relived her memory of the past. A single vacation with her dad in Turkey when she was eleven. Her dad looked too young to have an eleven years old daughter. The movie never revealed what the dad did daily, but it sure showed that he loved yoga and meditation. While having a holiday he brought book about yoga and meditation with him.

The character of Sophie don't have a unique back story. She was portrayed as a curious and courageous kid-teen. She observed on how adult-teen around her making up with each other. Not only observing, she also tried to get to know them personally. In the movie, he met with Michael, a boy her age that played motorbike arcade with her. They end up kissing at the end.

While Sophie getting to know new things about becoming an adult-teen, his dad hid something from her. He didn't only hid it from Sophie, but also the viewers. When Sophie was outside getting curious about the world, her dad would look sad and confused.

In a conversation, Sophie recorded her dad and ask 'when you were eleven years old, what did you think you would become at 31?', Callum (his dad) just celebrated his 31st birthday. 'Sophie, turn off the camera', he declined to answer Sophie's question and asked her to turn off the camera. She turned off the camera and ask her dad again, 'okay, there is no camera now, only me, and I will recorded it in my brain'. He say no.

In a lot of scenes, Callum shown to be sad, and more of that, he tried to kill himself. He stood on the balcony fence, look down. He walked through the middle of the words and a bus looked like run over him. He went into the ocean waves of a beach in the middle of the night.

As I felt deep raw emotions in me. The movies doesn't really have any plot. It only show the viewers sequences of Sophie's curiosity, Callum's hidden sadness, and both intimacy as a father and daughter. In the end of the movie, we all know Callum end up killing him self, but not in the vacation as adult Sophie was able to look at handycam recording of him saying goodbye to her in the airport.

This is director Charlotte Wells first published movie. She is clearly killing it.