Under pressure and in despair , hidden pain and attempts to care . an article about the film : aftersun

 

by : Seif Mohamed 


aftersun(2022)
Dir : Charlotte Wells

⚠️This article may contain spoilers 

“
Why can't we give love one more chance .. 
Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care
For the people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
“
  -Under Pressure 
  Song by David Bowie and Queen

When i first saw the film i was clueless about the story and the plot  I didn’t even read the synopsis 
So  i sat down to watch a nice movie about a wholsme father-daughter trip and actually the film at first tries to paint that  picture in your head  with the sunny beach , the camcorder that Sophie is using  to take wholesome footage , the  funny and quirky attitude  so you start wondering what could be interesting in such a story 
So after a couple of minutes watching 
You start releasing its not only about a summer vacation and some laughs!! 
Diving deep  into the meninges behind the clues  that  Charlotte Wells left us in every corner of every frame in every smile on  Calum’s face  the looks  of his eyes and his reactions to sophie’s questions and actions 
We start realizing that we’re not watching a wholesome film about a father- daughter trip 
In fact we are watching their last trip  . 
the last time they gonna see each other
Despite the fact  that Charlotte Wells  made the film from Sophie’s point of view  but you can’t help but jump into Calum’s head 
And how he clearly deals with a mental health issue a sort of depression is causing his disappear and pain , and  even tho  Charlotte  never stated any thing clearly in a dialogue but with every scene passing you see the pain in his eyes growing you see the wide frames full of blue skies and yellow sand is turning into dark frames portraying a growing  despair
and while he is bottling it all in for his daughter to give her a nice vacation that she can enjoy we clearly notice that he is  facing a bit of a financial problem so he can’t offer her alot  and even sometimes the basics …
So let’s talk for a while abut Sophie’s point of view  we see a coming of age story  with that 11 years old girl trying to discover herself  , her sexuality and what love really  is  . 
She knows that her father struggles financially and in a way she saw in his eyes the pain 
But she was just a kid after all so she just wanted to do like other kids have fun but seeing her dad in that way certainly  affected 
Her so she sang ….. 
 

“I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try “

Losing my religion 
 Song by R.E.M.




It was his 31st birthday 
And now you just know that he made up his mind. 
There is no place  for him anymore 
and as a viewer  you don’t understand his motives  , you can’t know  if he even feeling some sort of guilt for leaving his daughter in this world  but probably all the questions that we are asking now were the same questions that  popped up inside Sophie’s head for over 20 years after the  trip , 
the same questions the popped up  in her  head setting on that couch on her 31st birthday 
Looking up the videos of that trip on that old camcorder and remembering there last day together …
When he was definite he’s gonna do it 
He is going to end his misery 
He took her out to a nice dinner and  it  seems 
Like he don’t care about how much money he is gonna spend tonight and given the information we have now that seems quite understandable 
So after dinner and  while passing a party in the street he stopped , he started dancing and he called her to come and dance with him 
Throughout the whole film we sense the anxiety  in Calum’s actions , but in this dance he was flying with no  fear no anxieties no worries about tomorrow he dance and she danced with him while under pressure by David Bowie and Queen played in the background  just explaining to us

That yeah … This is their last dance .