Aftersun (2022), dir. Charlotte Wells. AMC Southdale, Tuesday, November 22.

Spoiler alert, though I don’t think what I write in the last paragraphs are really a “spoiler” in this essentially plotless film.

I have only three things to note about Aftersun, a movie I absolutely loved:

First, it’s one of the best films I’ve seen this year, just an absolute marvel. I feel as though I’m going to remember this screening on this damp November day as if its story were a part of my own personal experience, such is its power. It actually hurts to remember it, in that way that we welcome and even seek out from great art.

Second, I loathe that it was at theaters for like two weeks and no one saw it there. No one sees these little independent adult movies at theaters anymore. It’s Marvel or DC or some fat tentpole movie, big, fat epics or stuff from comic books. All of which are fun and lovely, but when that’s all people go to see, films like Aftersun will go away. That’s coming, mark my words.

So it goes to streaming, right? What’s so bad about that? I’ll set aside all arguments about being in crowds and the joys of movie theaters, but focus on this: that stream is wider than the Pacific Ocean. It’s growing to become wider than the Milky Way. And Aftersun is that little star in the smear of whitish grey light beneath the black scar in the night sky when you can actually see the galaxy. Will anyone remember to look this movie up later? Maybe if director Charlotte Wells pulls a Chloé Zhao in a few years and wins a big Oscar. That probably won’t happen, though. So Aftersun will not be seen by most people. And that’s very sad.

Finally, and this isn’t a critique, I am utterly at a loss as to critics’ observations that we don’t really know what happened between daughter and father in Aftersun, but clearly they are no longer in contact. Aftersun, briefly, is the story, told in flashback and from cheap 90s camcorder video, of a vacation between young dad, Calum (Paul Mescal), and 11-year-old daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio). They’re at a cheap, all-inclusive resort in Turkey. In the present, Sophie is her dad’s age (roughly), has a wife or girlfriend, and a baby, and she looks over the cheap video (that we see filmed in the flashbacks) with obvious melancholy and longing.

Here’s the spoiler: Calum is clearly dead. I don’t see how it could be any other way. Furthermore, I think he’s aware that he’s going to die. In these flashbacks, he speaks of being tired all the time, he has mysterious bruises. There’s a scene where he and Sophie are at a rug merchants’, and he is enthralled by a beautiful rug that he buys for himself. Adult Sophie is seen stepping onto the rug from bed in the present. They had a falling out and he gave her the rug? Calum weeps at an act of kindness by Sophie, with such profound pain you have to wonder why, except that he’s not going to see his child in short order–ever. Then there’s a dream-like sequence with Sophie and Calum dancing to strobe lights, moshing really. This is seen briefly throughout the film. In the final shot, we see Calum standing in a white room at the airport, having just said good-bye to Sophie as she returns to her mother (they’re divorced, but on good terms), and he videotapes this, then he turns and walks back through a pair of doors, behind which we see the strobe light. He’s gone, in a moment that is very reminiscent of the final shot in Claire Denis’ Beau Travail.

Please do yourself a favor and watch this devastating movie. It’s good to be devastated now and again.