Aftersun

One summer afternoon, I took a walk around Richmond’s VMFA. I lingered in the Impressionist gallery and read up on Renoir’s Day Dreaming, which was supposedly a big deal at the time because Renoir deliberately painted the model facing away from the viewer. Renoir, in other words, sought a reaction. I consequently wondered what “reactionary” means today, because today, it feels like, an artist can do pretty much anything they want. Just a few hours after visiting the VMFA, however, I watched Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun, and I had an answer. The film does a lot that other films do too - realistic characters; dramatic plot points suggested but not followed; lots of the best kind of subtlety; no wasted scenes; moments that wrenched the heart without needing to be overt about it; and incredible acting, including from a first-time child actor. Wells names her influences (Margaret Tait), but I’ve never seen a movie quite like it. She stirred a new kind of reaction in me. Aftersun offers an intangible “feel”, raw yet contained, notably by using unorthodox shots that in the wrong hands could go very wrong. Although she freely uses golden hour lighting, not every shot is meant to be pretty, at least not conventionally so. Many shots hit the screen jagged and broken, but they flow into the tone of the film, and the overall output will shake you up.