Post by Dracula on Oct 24, 2022 19:59:31 GMT -5
Aftersun(10/22/2022)
Aftersun was one of the biggest surprises to emerge out of Cannes, where it played outside the main competition and didn’t have a lot of buzz going in given that it was a directorial debut, but the reviews were rapturous and it got picked up by A24. I must say I was pretty excited for this one but I’d avoided most detailed reviews and wasn’t really sure what to expect from it and the resulting movie was not really something I entirely vibed with. The film is clearly meant to represent a memory about a divorced father taking his twelve year old daughter on a summer vacation to a touristy resort in Turkey during the late 90s. And that’s pretty much the whole plot description. For much of the movie you just kind of hang out with these two people at this resort and observe the minutia of this summer down to almost day to day detail. Watching it you’re interested because it’s well observed and there are a pair of very good performances by Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio as the daughter, but a traditional conflict never really kicks in and you do find yourself asking “Why these people? Why this trip? What’s the point of this?” Then very late in the film something is revealed which isn’t a “twist” exactly but does sort of re-contextualize what you’ve been watching in a way that is interesting, but it comes so late that the movie was already kind of losing me at that point. The movie reminds me a bit of Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, which is admittedly a movie I’ve been meaning to give another shot because I’m not sure I even finished it when I first tried to watch it. Clearly father/daughter hangout movies are not really my jam and in particular I don’t think I connected that much with these people; I wasn’t the child of divorce, I don’t have particularly conflicted feelings about my parents, and I also never vacationed at this sort of resort type place as a child. But that’s probably just me. I do however see some clear skill on the screen here and I would be very interested in seeing future works by director Charlotte Wells.
*** out of Five
[One Day Later]
Okay, I normally don’t do this but I’ve slept on this take I think additional thoughts have formed about this movie and it’s started to grow on me. The film is perhaps one of the more realized cinematic examples of what Ernest Hemingway called his “iceberg principle,” in which the actions that happen in a work are minimalistic but with a great deal being done thematically and emotionally just beneath the surface. I basically recognized that this was going on as I exited the movie but it’s a bit more impressive once you take a step away from the film and consider the work as a whole than when you’re actually watching the film for a first time and are frankly waiting and waiting for there to be a bit more action on the surface. Generally speaking, when I review a movie I feel like I’m experiencing the experience of watching it: the journey it takes you on, the excitement it brings, the laughs it evokes, and most importantly the thoughts that it evokes along the way. That’s kind of what I was getting at with that first capsule review and I’m going to preserve that because an experiential review like that matters, but as I consider the movie more holistically I worry that I didn’t quite give this the credit it needs for just how well it manages to make a point about itself using just a couple of kind of unconventional techniques late in its runtime. Having said that, I do think a decent amount of that trepidation I felt yesterday is still valid. It’s not too unusual for a movie to grow on me over time only to then revert to my previous thoughts when I try to rewatch it and am reminded why I had reservations in the first place, so there’s only so far I’m willing to go in talking myself into this one, but I do want to give the movie its due for getting into my head after the fact just the same.
***1/2 out of Five
Aftersun was one of the biggest surprises to emerge out of Cannes, where it played outside the main competition and didn’t have a lot of buzz going in given that it was a directorial debut, but the reviews were rapturous and it got picked up by A24. I must say I was pretty excited for this one but I’d avoided most detailed reviews and wasn’t really sure what to expect from it and the resulting movie was not really something I entirely vibed with. The film is clearly meant to represent a memory about a divorced father taking his twelve year old daughter on a summer vacation to a touristy resort in Turkey during the late 90s. And that’s pretty much the whole plot description. For much of the movie you just kind of hang out with these two people at this resort and observe the minutia of this summer down to almost day to day detail. Watching it you’re interested because it’s well observed and there are a pair of very good performances by Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio as the daughter, but a traditional conflict never really kicks in and you do find yourself asking “Why these people? Why this trip? What’s the point of this?” Then very late in the film something is revealed which isn’t a “twist” exactly but does sort of re-contextualize what you’ve been watching in a way that is interesting, but it comes so late that the movie was already kind of losing me at that point. The movie reminds me a bit of Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, which is admittedly a movie I’ve been meaning to give another shot because I’m not sure I even finished it when I first tried to watch it. Clearly father/daughter hangout movies are not really my jam and in particular I don’t think I connected that much with these people; I wasn’t the child of divorce, I don’t have particularly conflicted feelings about my parents, and I also never vacationed at this sort of resort type place as a child. But that’s probably just me. I do however see some clear skill on the screen here and I would be very interested in seeing future works by director Charlotte Wells.
*** out of Five
[One Day Later]
Okay, I normally don’t do this but I’ve slept on this take I think additional thoughts have formed about this movie and it’s started to grow on me. The film is perhaps one of the more realized cinematic examples of what Ernest Hemingway called his “iceberg principle,” in which the actions that happen in a work are minimalistic but with a great deal being done thematically and emotionally just beneath the surface. I basically recognized that this was going on as I exited the movie but it’s a bit more impressive once you take a step away from the film and consider the work as a whole than when you’re actually watching the film for a first time and are frankly waiting and waiting for there to be a bit more action on the surface. Generally speaking, when I review a movie I feel like I’m experiencing the experience of watching it: the journey it takes you on, the excitement it brings, the laughs it evokes, and most importantly the thoughts that it evokes along the way. That’s kind of what I was getting at with that first capsule review and I’m going to preserve that because an experiential review like that matters, but as I consider the movie more holistically I worry that I didn’t quite give this the credit it needs for just how well it manages to make a point about itself using just a couple of kind of unconventional techniques late in its runtime. Having said that, I do think a decent amount of that trepidation I felt yesterday is still valid. It’s not too unusual for a movie to grow on me over time only to then revert to my previous thoughts when I try to rewatch it and am reminded why I had reservations in the first place, so there’s only so far I’m willing to go in talking myself into this one, but I do want to give the movie its due for getting into my head after the fact just the same.
***1/2 out of Five
