Aftersun (2022) review

Scottish poppet Sophie (Frankie Corio) goes on holiday to Turkey with her single father Calum (Paul Mescal) where they lay around, play pool and water polo, she sings karaoke and so on, but years later, as a grown-up (Celia Rowlson-Hall) with her own child, she reflects on what dear ol' Pop was going through at the time.  This is Wells' feature debut and clearly an autobiographical and self-reflective exercise, but it's also meandering and full of film school affectations - the extreme close-ups, for example, are gratuitous.  Providing more context would have helped too instead of merely being coy: surely at age eleven she couldn't have known what Dad's issues were (was he bi-polar? an alcoholic? both?), but as an adult it would have been good to inform the audience what happened to him, if he ever recovered and whether their bond got weaker or stronger as they aged.  I can fully see this encouraging people to dig up old vacation photos and get misty-eyed ... but I'll stick with Sadie Benning's early work.