Course:Aftersun by Charlotte Wells
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Spoiler Alert: I do not think I could talk about this film without ruining it.
The 2022 film is written and directed by Wells. It is a coming of age film, surrounding what we find out is a woman retracing what would be her last memories of her father. I saw it the first time with my ex-partner at home on the projector screen and as soon as the credits rolled I could not stop crying for about half an hour. This could be understandable however. It had been less that a year before lost my favourite cousin to Covid-19 (and yes it does matter more if they are your favourite), we carried the same first name and it suited him more that it did me for sure. The year before I lost my first love, he was in Canada and I found out a month later after he "stopped" answering my messages for a month, I thought he was tired or had relapsed, alas he was gone.
The film does not relate to either story specifically but I do not think that I have seen a modern film that quite succeeded to capture grief and mental illness as well as this film does. With Wells we are invited to follow the plot primarily through home video footage and some memory recollections. Almost the entire film is set during their holiday vacation together in a resort town in Turkey. We follow her dad primarily through her child lens with other parts that felt more imagined. It is so subtle, perhaps slow. Alternating between moments of brief simple joy and hints of melancholy. There is a part when Sophie (the girl) says to her father (Calum):
"Don't you ever feel like... you've just done a whole amazing day and then you come home and feel tired and down and... it feels like your organs don't work, they're just tired, and everything is tired. Like you're sinking. I don't know, it's weird."
You can feel how uncomfortable this makes him feel. Makes you question why. Makes you wonder what things did we say as children that might have given our parents this kind of discomfort. It becomes clearer bit a bit what causes Calum's anguish. He had Sophie with her mother when they were both young and never stayed together. He never stayed with someone for too long and you can feel he is a bit lonely. He loves his daughter but feels like a disappointment. The story is not just what happened to Calum, it is Sophie trying to figure out what happened to him.
The second time I saw the film was with a friend whose both parents had passed away recently. I thought it would be too much for her (someone she was dating kept asking her to come with him). She talks about her grief a lot so he must have known. I honestly thought it was a little bit careless for him not to warn her what the film entails. It would hit too close to home.
She was fine, and I started crying the last 20 minutes of the film and could not stop. There was something about his depression that felt so relatable. I actually rarely relate to films that center depression. I feel them. I appreciate the content and the sentiment. But not often do they affect me this much. I did a lot of reading about the film, and it is not just the Wells is queer, she also said in an interview that almost all her characters are.
There is this theory that Calum was gay and had AIDS and that is was the trigger of his grief. I am not sure I agree to that. I do think he had queer grief though. That he watched the world destroy him and is grieving the outcome. I hope one day I meet Wells and get to ask her myself.