[Film Review] Aftersun (2022) and Scrapper (2023)

The dynamism between a young father and his pre-teen daughter is intricately probed in these two feature-length debut from two female directors, both from UK, they even share the same Christian name.

Charlotte Wells's AFTERSUN springs from her own personal recollections. Sophie (Corio), an 11-year-old Scottish girl, spends a seemingly carefree holiday in a Turkish resort with her divorced father Calum (Mascal), on the eve of his 31st birthday. What Wells so sublimely effects is to instill an inviting sense of unease bubbling underneath the surface of prosaicness. Take an example, early in the film, in their hotel room on their first night, Sophie is tucked in and slumbers, the static camera first instates her in the foreground under dim light, then it follows Calum, who enters the balcony to smoke a fag. Zooming in on him with his back to us, the camera stays stock still for a moment conceivably longer than usual, then zooms out to its prior frame. Narratively, this sequence serves no points, but by inserting the camera's undivided gaze, Wells seems to intimate us that there is something iffy about Calum.

AFTERSUN's most rewarding achievement resides in Wells's transcendent capacity to reveal what is beneath Calum's straining normalcy without actually spelling it out. Everything we know about him is either through his casual talk with Sophie (he is displaced from Scotland to London and cannot go back, romantically and vocationally unfulfilled, a troubled childhood, etc.), or from those moments when he is on his ownsome, doing something rather foreboding (standing on the balcony rails, covering his face with a wet towel, etc.). Such unease reaches its apex on the night when Calum refuses to sing R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" with Sophie (the song's lyrics may touch a raw nerve in him) and is later seen walking towards the choppy ocean alone, and seemingly vanishes.

Calum's simmering depression and suicidal ideation is something persistently hovers around audience's head ever since our subliminal dread that he would jump off the balcony on the first night, which transmutes into an ineffaceable sadness that can resonate with audience globally, about one's close yet distant relationship with one's father, of what you can discern but not articulate when you were young, what your father tries to shield from you, the heavy toll of adulthood and parenthood, it is an unnerving feeling.

Punctuating her film with MiniDV footage of the vacation (among which, a prolonged one directing at the television informs us Calum's pursuance of mindfulness despite his taedium vitae, also clarifies what Sophie perceives as his weird, slow ninja move is actually him playing tai chi) and a present-time rave party bursting with strobing lights where an adult Sophie (Rowlson-Hall) trying and then failing to connect with a phantom Calum, lost in the starburst, Wells juxtaposes the misalignment between memory and expectation to compose an infinitely touching ode to her father, and by extension, to all fathers, especially those younger ones who struggles to secure their purchase in the world.

AFTERSUN's another wow factor is the central duo, Corio and Mescal possess that rarest quality of tacit communion, they don't need to overdo anything, their finely calibrated two-play is naturalism of the first order and for Mescal, who is awarded with an Oscar nomination, his expression of self-contained, self-abnegating trauma is soul-shattering to watch, and results in a long-lasting reverberation after the fact.

In Charlotte Regan's SCRAPPER, like Mescal, Dickinson also plays a character a few years older than his own age (both him and Mescal are born in 1996). If Mescal's transition from a teenager in NORMAL PEOPLE (2020) to AFTERSUN's world-weary dad is a gobsmacked feat, Dickinson endeavors to play it cool and accents the character's man-child immaturity.

Pairing Dickinson's Jason with Georgie (Campbell), a housing-project-dwelling, bicycle-stealing, self-reliant 12-year-old girl in the wake of the passing of her mother, begrudgingly accepts the returning of Jason, her birth father who has hitherto been missing in her life, to live under the same roof. Regan's script pluckier wrestles with the common topos of the formation of a none-too-late father-daughter bond. Tellingly, SCRAPPER is scrappier and more bullish than AFTERSUN, not least courtesy to its luminous colorways and a comical assembly of deadpan peripheral characters breaking the fourth wall and making hilarious comments.

Georgie is a hellion matured well before her age, acting tenacious and recalcitrant because life has hardened her into doing so to survive, and Campbell is totally convincing in manifesting her precociousness and faux-toughness, in several occasions, she uncannily looks like an adult living inside a tyke's body. The less jovial undertow of Georgie's concealed grief is symbolized by a "babel tower" made of scraps erecting in a locked room. The disparity of the tower's scale seen through her eyes and Jason's eyes is a brilliant touch to emphasize the adult-child perspective dissonance. One shall enter into a kid's mindset in order to understand them.

Skirting around the more practical aspects of their lives, SCRAPPER ends with a chipper note that folds parentification into parenthood after the two reconcile their feelings and reservations. However, by making light of Georgie and Jason's precarious state, SCRAPPER risks to be pegged as another quixotical fairytale, injecting a life-affirming shot to audience's arm instead of providing something useful which can better their lives. Bicycle-filching isn't an ideal meal ticket, once caught, Jason might forfeit his guardianship and what woeful fate would befall a headstrong Georgia, one could only imagine.

referential entries:Maggie Gyllenhaal's THE LOST DAUGHTER (2021, 8.2/10); Mike Leigh's ALL OR NOTHING (2002, 7.5/10); Eliza Hittman's BEACH RATS (2017, 6.9/10).

Title:Aftersun

Year:2022

Country:UK, USA

Language:English, Turkish, Spanish

Genre:Drama

Director/Screenwriter: Charlotte Wells

Music:Oliver Coates

Cinematography:Gregory Oke

Editor:Blair McClendon

Cast:

Paul Mescal

Frankie Corio

Celia Rowlson-Hall

Brooklyn Toulson

Spike Fearn

Harry Perdios

Ruby Thompson

Rating:8.3/10

Title:Scrapper

Year:2023

Country:UK

Language:English

Genre:Comedy, Drama

Director/Screenwriter: Charlotte Regan

Music:Patrick Jonsson

Cinematography:Molly Manning Walker

Editors: Matteo Bini, Billy Sneddon

Cast:

Lola Campbell

Harris Dickinson

Alin Uzun

Cary Crankson

Ambreen Razia

Freya Bell

Asheq Akhtar

Jessica Fostekew

Joshua Frater-Loughlin

Aylin Tezel

Olivia Brady

Laura Aikman

Rating:7.0/10