Aftersun

Charlotte Wells’ delectable debut movie is a film about the overwhelming power of the past and its terrible, tragic inaccessibility. Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of the holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier at a budget resort in Turkey. The title elegantly gestures at something understood only when it has receded into the past, when its heat has cooled and when some balm is needed. The movie ripples and shimmers like a swimming pool of mystery, unspooling naturally, like a haunting and deceptively simple short story.