Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal in a scene from the film ‘Aftersun.’
For me, few films from the 2020s have lingered in the mind quite like Aftersun. Back in July 2024, Charlotte Wells’ feature debut arrived on Netflix, exposing its quiet, devastating power to a new wave of viewers who had perhaps never even heard of the film. But on March 21, the streaming window closes (your last day to watch will be March 20), and this modern masterpiece produced by the movie studio with the tightest grip on the current movie zeitgeist, A24, will be gone from Netflix. And the movie has clearly struck a chord with audiences over the past three years, considering it currently ranks on the Letterboxd Top 250 and owns a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. If you haven’t watched it yet—or even if you have—now is the perfect time to experience (or revisit) what has made Aftersun one of the most deeply affecting films of the decade thus far.
While Aftersun tells of a short summer holiday between father and daughter, its true subject is far more elusive—and, ultimately, tragic. The film’s brilliance lies in its ability to capture the gaps between what we remember and what we long to understand, all while challenging our selective memories and how trustworthy our memory truly is. The film unfolds through the perspective of an adult woman, Sophie, reflecting on her childhood, combing through fragments of the past to make sense of something that, inevitably, always remains just out of reach. She is desperate to understand why her father, Calum, fell into such a deep depression—but he is no longer there to help her make sense of it. Thus, the story’s depth comes not from what is said, but from what is left unsaid, what is never fully understood from the moments that shift in meaning as time passes.
An incredibly important motif in Aftersun is Sophie’s camera, which not only provides her a sliver of a glimpse into her past, but also allows us to observe and critique her fallible memory of the vacation, creating for a meta experience about what it means to remember something. What sets Aftersun apart from many meta films is the way it portrays memory as something both intimate and unreliable; the film resists easy conclusions, and instead offers a delicate, shifting mosaic of recollections—some tangible, others imagined, with many shaped by hindsight. The film’s structure mirrors this experience, slipping seamlessly between past and present, between reality and impression, evoking the way memories resurface not as perfect snapshots but as hazy, shifting emotions that change as we grow and evolve, that fluctuate the more we reflect on them.
Of course, none of these themes would have much heft with being back by stunning performances. Paul Mescal, now on track to become a bona fide movie star, earned an Oscar nomination (he should have won) for his performance of quiet intensity as Calum, crafting a character who is desperate to mask the dark figure beneath. His portrayal of depression hits home for a society stricken with a mental illness crisis, and reveals how difficult it is to express what we don’t even understand about ourselves. And Frankie Corio, in her debut role, captures the openness and curiosity of youth through Sophie in a way that feels completely authentic. Her naive ignorance to her father’s condition is both relatable and tragic, and gives weight to an older Sophie who could have very well inherited her father’s trauma and depression. Together, they create a relationship that feels achingly real—full of love, humor and the small, fleeting moments that shape our lives in ways we don’t realize until much later.
Wells’ direction is restrained yet deeply expressive, using small details—a gesture, a glance, a fleeting touch of sunlight—to evoke profound emotions, while embracing other seemingly innocuous details—a hang glider, a camera, a rug—as motifs that paint a portrait of accessing memory, of finding fulfillment in the present moment. Through this approach, the film’s visual language is rich with meaning as its transforms everyday objects into echoes of the past, into brushstrokes of our constantly evolving self-portraits. Because of such details, Aftersun becomes a film that should not only be viewed, but re-viewed as we revisit not only Sophie and Calum’s story, but our own, and our ability to recollect our own story. Each viewing of Aftersun uncovers new layers, new connections, new moments of recognition. The experience is never quite the same twice, mirroring the way our own memories shift with time.
Perhaps this is what makes Aftersun feel so timeless: it is a film about the way we process our past, about the way emotions live on long after moments have passed. It is deeply personal yet universally resonant, offering something new to consider each time you return to it. With its departure from Netflix fast approaching, now is the time to watch (or revisit) Aftersun, a film that doesn’t just tell a story but captures the intangible weight of time, memory and the things we hold onto even as they slip away.
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