In Charlotte Wells’ Oscar-nominated debut feature, “Aftersun,” queerness is presented as an open-ended and formative experience for both the father and daughter protagonists. The film is told through Sophie’s point of view and consists of scenes she had captured on her MiniDV camera during the vacation. It explores queerness and identity in a father-daughter dynamic in a way that is difficult to categorize but truly resonates with its audience.
The film begins with Calum (Paul Mescal), a young divorced father, and his 11-year-old daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio), on vacation together in Turkey in the 1990s. As they spend time together, the unspoken nature of Calum’s relationship with his business partner, Keith, comes to light. While Sophie’s queerness is more defined in her adulthood, Calum’s sexuality is left ambiguous, leaving audiences to speculate whether he may be queer or not. This open-endedness is a hallmark of the film’s storytelling, and it resonates deeply with viewers.
The trip to Turkey marks a pivotal moment in both Sophie’s and Calum’s lives. While Sophie discovers her own queerness during the trip, Calum’s unspoken anguish is hinted at throughout the film. Sophie comes to understand her own queerness while moseying about a chintzy Turkish resort, and her adult counterpart gleans that what she was discovering about herself was perhaps also the source of her father’s unspoken anguish.
The film’s timeline offers a clue into Calum’s psyche, if he is indeed queer. It may be simplistic to conflate generalized psychological suffering with 1990s closetedness, but that era was indeed the height of the AIDS epidemic. The film invites multiplicity with its work, and Calum serves as the vehicle for these interpretive possibilities. By embracing the polysemous instead of rushing to define her lead character, Wells has given us a feature that exists somewhere between capital-Q queer cinema and a more lowercase approach.