Fleapit revisited:Aftersun.

Charlotte Wells' debut film Aftersun begins slowly - and quietly. Almost apologetically. Opening scenes feature handheld camcorder footage, abstracted images, and voices fading away mid-sentence. These affectations continue throughout the film as we see scenes reflected in mirrors, the darkened screens of turned off televisions, and we're treated to multiple images of paragliders in flight, swimming pools, and, indeed, the reflection of paragliders in flight in swimming pools.

Yet by the time the film ends you've been hit by something very powerful, something which carries a fair bit of emotional heft. Something really special. Aftersun tells the story of thirty something father Calum (Paul Mescal) and his eleven year old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) and a package holiday they take together at a Turkish beach resort some time in the nineties.

Calum has split with Sophie's mother and moved from Scotland to Southend so we understand, immediately, that they don't see each other as often as they'd like to and that this holiday carries great importance to both of them.

Despite a few minor disappointments with the hotel, they manage to make the best of it. They take a pedalo out to sea, they play chess, they visit old ruins, they cover themselves in mud, they laugh at the holiday reps dancing to the Macarena, and they join a game of water polo in the resort's pool. They make each other laugh and the chuckles of recognition that rang out across the cinema confirmed to me just how authentically this father/daughter relationship was being portrayed.

Corio is brilliant as Sophie. She's funny, she's cute, she's creative, and she's kind. She is utterly adorable. She is everything any parent would wish their child to be. She's also surprisngly good at pool and this brings her into contact with a group of older kids who despite being primarily focused on drinking, pushing each other in the pool, and snogging look kindly on Sophie and she on them.

She also makes friends with a young boy roughly her own age, Michael (Brooklyn Toulson), and they play on the 'motorbike game' in the arcade together and tease each other. When she films herself talking about going on a scuba diving trip and having an octopus on her head and a seahorse curled round her finger I nearly melted. When she sang REM's Losing My Religion at karaoke I did. 

Corio, I repeat, is incredible in what appears to be her first ever role. But Mescal, as most of us know by now, is no slouch either. Calum is complicated. While he clearly adores Sophie (just look at the love in his eyes as he applies her suntan lotion and embarrasses her dad dancing to David Bowie and Queen's Under Pressure) he seems to carry an emotional baggage way too heavy for a man of his comparatively young age.

When he finishes a phone call with Sophie's mum, he ends with a casual "love you" which can be interpreted as still having romantic feelings towards her - or not, he tells a tour guide he's surprised he's made it to thirty, work and relationships don't seem to be going well for him yet he buys a Turkish rug that appears to be way beyond his means, and one night he gets drunk alone. Presumably wrestling with the demons that seem to haunt him.

We see a small tear in the corner of his eye when he's sunbathing on the beach but, to protect both Sophie and his own pride, he tries to hide it from her. Sophie's tough though and she can sense that Calum is struggling. In this film, it is the father that we feel the most worried about.

Which is brave and unusual. But then this is a brave and unusual film. The nineties soundtrack (Blur's Tender, Catatonia's Road Rage, Bran Van 3000's Drinking In LA) never feels shoehorned in, the quiet moments of reflection allow the characters to develop naturally, and nothing ever feels forced or unreal. With two stellar leading performances, Charlotte Wells has made something of a minor classic. I can't stop thinking about it.