NEW YORK (AP) â A normal morning scene. Breakfast on the kitchen table. A newspaper rustles. A backpack is packed. The mother asks her teenage daughter if sheâll be home later. âItâs Tuesday, so, um, Iâm going to go to Dadâs.â
The look of concern on the motherâs face, and the tone of the school day's interactions, give a sense of some unspoken loss hanging over the girl. Each detail tugs at you until finally, after the girl has spent the afternoon alone in the dying light of her fatherâs apartment, her mother arrives to quietly take her home.
So unfolds the first short film by the 35-year-old Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells, and one that bears many of the hallmarks found in her shattering feature debut, It, too, centers on a young girl and her father. It, too, radiates with the glow of memory while coursing with an undertow of grief.
âI made the first one without ever considering who would see it and why. It was an exercise for myself. A few people responded very strongly to it, but it was a few. Like, 10% would be generous," Wells says. "But when they did, it was a very meaningful response. It seemed very sincere. That was always enough for me.â
Many more have been moved by âAŽÚłÙ±đ°ùČőłÜČÔ.â Devastated, actually, is more like it. Since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, âAftersunâ has accumulated a rare kind of buzz. Here was the uncommonly mature debut of a filmmaker of masterful control and deep wells of empathy. Here was the self-evident launch of a major new voice.
âThe rumors,â âare true.â
It was Wellsâ shorts that first brought her to the attention of Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski. While making they had coffee with Wells to talk about a possible feature. Two years later, Wells came back with a script. Romanski and Jenkins signed on to produce through Pastel, their production company formed with the intention of enabling young directors similar to how Plan B helped them make
âThrough that whole process, Charlotte always had faith in the ethereal gooey stuff that you canât arrive at mathematically, that you canât arrive at through some book on screenplay conventions,â Jenkins says. âI kind of describe it as a magic trick. As you watch the film, you get to those last two minutes, and you realize: âHoly s---, Iâve arrived at this place and it feels like magic.â
âAftersun,â which A24 releases in select theaters Friday, stars newcomer Frankie Corio as 11-year-old Sophie whoâs traveling with her father, Calum (Paul Mescal), on a summer vacation in Turkey. Gently poised from the perspective of an older Sophie we only vaguely see, the film is a memory piece. In many ways, it feels like a coming-of-age film. Sophie, teetering between childhood and young adulthood, is attracting the attention of older kids. But we gradually grasp that itâs not Sophie whoâs sliding away from her dad. Itâs Calum, wrestling with his own demons, who may be adrift.
Coming from her Brooklyn apartment and shortly before , Wells, who goes by âCharlie,â met a reporter for coffee near Union Square in New York to reflect on a head-spinning year and some of the heartache behind âAŽÚłÙ±đ°ùČőłÜČÔ.â Wellsâ father died when she was 16.
âHe lived in London for the most part when I was a kid. I spent a lot of time with him. He would come up a lot,â Wells says, brightening with his memory. âHe was really loving and ambitious and super creative and probably had some ambition that I be a filmmaker, which is something that occurred to me only recently. I hate to think that I fulfilled some idea of what a parent wanted for me. My goal was to do the opposite.â
Wells has sometimes spoken obliquely about the personal roots of âAftersun,â describing it as âemotionally autobiographical.â But many details of the film have profound connections with her life. Sophie plays at times with a Mini-DV camera. Wellsâ father gave her the same kind of camera as a teenager.
âI was always preoccupied with keeping a record of things visually,â Wells says, describing how she shot friends and parties, including a last-day-of-school celebration before reluctantly changing schools. âI recorded everybody and everything. It really froze that moment in time in a way that I felt like I could still slide back into it.â
In writing âAftersun,â she played back old Mini-DV tapes that her father shot of her, sometimes drawing dialogue from the footage. The tapes prompted reflection about how memory and film intertwine.
âThereâs a one-hour tape that I received well past being a teenager,â says Wells. âItâs a game of chess between us and his friend and everyoneâs head is cut off. Itâs just torsos. Itâs like the cruelest joke that only I can find funny. Itâs such a strange record to have and definitely had some impact on the film."
Her father, Wells says, exposed her to a lot of art, music and film â sometimes to âstuff that was much cooler and more interesting than I was ready for,â said Wells. âIt laid a foundation so that when I was ready on my own terms, I could find it.â
âMy mom would joke that his head was above the clouds and her feet were more firmly planted on the ground,â Wells adds. âIn a lot of ways, Iâm some combination of them that I appreciate. My feet are on the ground and my head is above the clouds." She laughs. "Iâm just really tall."
Wellsâ film education continued at New York University where she made several shorts. Even in her student films you can see an uncommon balance of subtlety and revelation. In Wellsâ films, thereâs often a surface reality and a hidden, more painful one. In which was inspired by a similar experience Wells had on the subway on her way to NYU, a young woman is sexually assaulted on a crowded train where no one notices â or, at least, no one seems to notice.
âI think âLapsâ is the least oblique,â she says of the short, a prize-winner at Sundance and SXSW in 2017. âIf you miss whatâs going on, I really think you donât want to see whatâs going on.â
To Romanski, âAftersunâ may be a step up into features, but thereâs nothing âfirst filmâ about it.
âThereâs a deep belief that if someone like Charlotte does what theyâve already demonstrated in 10 minutes what theyâre capable of over 90 minutes â and if we do our job as producers â then you can arrive at a place like âAftersun,ââ says Romanski.
Making it, though, meant toiling over every detail, carefully sculpting the film's precise but organic flow. âI wrote so many openings and so many endings,â Wells sighs. Jenkins, himself a maker of richly vivid, lyrical films that compress present and past, was intimately involved in the process. He estimates that through the edit, heâs seen the film 12 to 15 times.
âThere were times Iâd watch the damn film four times in a week,â says Jenkins. âYouâd have to watch it how these small moves make these massive ripples.â
âAftersunâ has made its own waves playing on the festival circuit around the globe, including the New York Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. Wells, who started out making movies as âan exercise for myselfâ has been surprised by how much âAftersunâ has resonated with others.
âAdele likes to remind me: âSee, you would have been happy if only one person got your film,ââ Wells says, smiling. âBut it has been nice, Iâll admit, that more than one person has responded to this film, and that the ratio has been flipped a little. I donât know why."
âBut Iâm glad I never thought about what would happen when the credits rolled, until they rolled.â
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Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
