A vacation that never was. What happens after the sun?

February is the worst month of the year. 

 The festive mood of Christmas became a distant past at this point, and spring seems as far away as George Martin’s Winds of Winter. It is the time when I feel most captured and caged, in my body, my city, my life. After the haze of January, with its university exams and New Year’s resolutions, February appears not as a moment for relaxation, but overthinking. I do not want to be here, now, I do not even want to be me. Therefore, I went to the cinema to escape myself just for the moment, and to check if the characters from Aftersun feel the same. Spoiler alert: they do.

                                                                       "Aftersun" (2022), dir. Charlotte Wells

The trailer  presents the story as a perfect escape from the muddy and bleak atmosphere of the winter. A father takes his daughter on vacation to Turkey sometime in the 1990s, where they enjoy all the summer-ish things: sunbathing, swimming, meeting new friends, singing karaoke. We all have such memories and we treasure them, knowing what a fleeting time it is, knowing they will have to sustain us for the next year of mundane day-to-day existence. We see ourselves doing those things with Sophie and Calum, also thanks to the peculiar camera work which makes the movie seem to be recorded by an amateur – one of us. We see the scenery changing rapidly outside the window when Sophie and her father are travelling to the hotel by bus. We identify with the girl when she records short videos on her camera – today we would call them “vlogs” – of her father diving and of herself telling the audience what they are going to do in the evening. What we do not expect at the beginning is the extra layer of meaning that unfolds with time. It is not simply a pretty picture taken out of a family vacation album, but a story of the adult Sophie who tries to understand and revisit her father and his demons that followed him everywhere – until they didn’t.

The adult Sophie is 31, and so is Calum in her memories. What we realise by watching a lot of unnerving scenes – Calum running to the sea in the night, Calum standing on the balcony’s barrier as if he wanted to fall – is the fact that Calum will forever be 31. Under the surface of seemingly happy and serene vacation there are anguish-evoking images that make us realise Calum’s story does not have a happy ending. Sophie and her father are haunted by time and aging. As any child, Sophie wants to grow up – a dream she probably comes to regret when she is 31 – while all Calum wants is to stop time. Perhaps he would like to turn the clock back, have more time to do it “all” again and differently. Despite being 31 and having a child, he does not feel “completed”. He is not satisfied with his career, love life, the reality overwhelms him. The most honest and heart-breaking words come from his mouth: “I can’t see myself at 40 to be honest. Surprised I made it to 30”. Who never felt that way? We all sometimes feel like we are sinking, no longer adhering to the “Hemingway’s code” in life because we feel disillusioned and exhausted from trying just to keep on the surface and not disappoint our loved once.

What happened to Calum? The last scene shows him coming into a dimmed room with a lot of people. He is not returning to some party, but he is stepping back into Sophie’s memories. This is the only place he exists in now. Most likely he committed suicide sometime after the trip. It shows the never-dying truth that love is not enough to save somebody.

It is not, however, another movie about depression, but also about relationships and, perhaps most importantly, a movie about the roles we perform in life. we are parents, children, but how to reconcile it with being human, being ourselves? Who are we? Is being a parent and a child all that I am, where is my personality, my life expectations, my dreams in all that?

A scene that strongly resonated with me comes from the future. We first encounter Sophie in Turkey as a young girl whom I would describe as “expectant” and “experiencing”. There are so many things in life awaiting her and she is so impatient to live through them. This effervescent dream is faced finally when she turns 31 – the age her father was during their vacation in Turkey. In the adult Sophie sitting at the side of her bed, listening to the cries of her son, we see ourselves. How did I get here? Did my parents also feel so lost when they were at this age? Is the adult life always a disillusionment and a requiem for the unfulfilled dreams?

All these musings are appropriately captured in the title. Because it is by no means an ad reminder of an "after sun" cream when we finish sunbathing (although Calum does fulfill his parental duties and puts it on Sophie's shoulders) What is it, that actually happens after sun? On a more metaphorical level we would say “aftersun” refers to the time after having lived through something amazing, life-changing. Like this vacation in turkey, all good things come to an end and what happens after them is “after sun” – no longer a glorious, fleeting moments of happiness, but a return to mundane life where we have to face discouraging reality. We all have reached the “aftersun” at some point in our lives. Coming home from pleasurable holidays, recovering from a hangover after a party, having to return to school after the summer.

However, a most obvious answers to “what happens after the sun” would be: we go to sleep. The moon rises. Children dream sweet dreams filled with fairies, castles and exciting things to come the next day. Parents, in the next room, clench their teeth into the pillow, trying not to cry and wake up their sweet unfinished beings. This movie is the anthem to all these people who want to spit in their mirror reflection like Calum. Kudos to you. Not for making the world a better place, not for loving us so much, but simply for trying.

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When I returned home, my friends put on Manchester by the Sea. Amazing, I thought with a pinch of irony and a couple of tears already gathering at the corners of my eyes. Yet, in the depressive month of February we probably need such movies that are going to move us and make us appreciate the people we have in our lives. We never know when they stop permeating our lives and start living in our memories.