With his classic 1990s heartthrob looks, it was only a matter of time before Paul Mescal found his way into a film set in that era. Like “Normal People,” the series that catapulted the young Irish actor to fame, Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun” has him wearing shorts, but this time with a belt and the polo shirt tucked in — a detail like many others in the film that should send a wave of recognition through audience members who grew up then. Only ’90s kids will remember this.
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The film is nostalgic for that era in part because it is actually a memory. Sophie (Frankie Corio), the young girl spending her holiday in a Turkish resort with her dad (Mescal), is soon seen in enigmatic strobe-light sequences as a grown-up woman, standing still in the middle of a nightclub and staring at her father, who looks the way he looked then. He is lost in the dance, utterly oblivious to her presence, but she seems concerned or angry, and it is clear from this imaginary sequence that despite what the old miniDV images that open the film suggest, their relationship wasn’t all rosy.
However, this framing device does not stop the film from veering dangerously close to a fetishization of the 1990s of the kind that has already affected so many. “Aftersun” references both mediocre and slightly less mediocre pop culture artifacts of the era with the same unmistakable air of wistful longing. The miniDV videos recorded by father and daughter largely avoid this pitfall because the images they show eventually come to advance the film, but the same cannot be said of a passing reference to the Macarena, to cite just one example. To have such a universally known song play in the background of a scene without any of the characters acknowledging it pushes the ’90s lover’s melancholic rewrite of history just a little too far. The Macarena transcends time and space; it is a show-stopper (or -starter), not a mood-setter.
But mood — or “vibes,” as the kids call them — is what “Aftersun” really is after. Essentially plotless, the film strings together a series of moments as they were seen and experienced by the young Sophie: lazy days repeat themselves with only slight variations, yet slowly build to a crisis between father and daughter. But if the general set-up recalls Lynne Ramsay’s “Morvern Callar,” Wells’ film does not conjure up the kind of heady, hypnotizing sensory experience that the former did. Where Ramsay’s film was mysterious, its impressions as powerful as they were difficult to put into words, Wells’, on the other hand, betrays an often too literal and cerebral conception of feelings and their unknowable components. This is especially striking in the conversations between parent and child, Sophie’s childlike insouciance sitting awkwardly with the sober, almost straightforward chats she has with her dad. Also too neat are the attempts to evoke the mystery surrounding this usually easy-going father with scenes of Mescal alone, deep in thought, or even sobbing — scenes which are obviously striking but remain much less convincing than the actor’s own mournful and melancholy performance.
Of course, the intention of those big, intense moments is to do justice to the magnitude of some very personal and powerful emotions. In that regard, “Aftersun” is a tonic — particularly at a festival where art films are generally cold and polite. But while those feelings are undeniable, they fail to connect. Bold acrobatics in editing and ambitious creative choices feel all the more superfluous next to Mescal’s effortless charisma. [C+]
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