For a scene in Aftersun that Charlotte Wells eventually left on the cutting room floor, the young star of the Scottish filmmaker’s debut feature plunges into the icy depths of a Turkish cold spring. Sophie, played by vivacious newcomer Frankie Corio, watches with her father Calum — portrayed by a more world-weary Paul Mescal than fans of his Normal People character will be accustomed to — as a group of burly men compete to see who can stay in for the longest.
“Eventually one wins and comes out of the water, and as the group leaves, Sophie turns to her dad, saying: ‘Time me’,” Charlotte says, who herself turns to look at the beaming 12-year-old actor sitting next to her on the sofa. The pair are taking their press commitments together in a plush hotel room in London’s Soho. “She gives him a watch, jumps in, and stays in longer than any of the men could, as indeed, Frankie did.”
The scene won’t see the light of day, but it matters negligibly to the film’s young star, who is just thankful for the chilly memory of the experience. “It was actually really fun. So it wasn’t like, ‘All that work and it didn’t even get put in!’” Frankie says, pivoting to a hammy American accent to express her hypothetically distraught reaction. “All the guys were asking me how I wasn’t cold, so I shouted at them.” She shrugs. “I told them I was from Scotland.”
Charlotte ended up scrapping the interlude as she felt it “disrupted the pace” of the tightly-assembled 101-minute movie, which examines a young woman’s memories of her father — primarily from one particular resort vacation during her 1990s childhood — to form a spellbinding family portrait. In their review of the film, The New York Times praised the director for her uniquely intuitive “narrative instincts”, which tend to follow “the logic of emotion rather than the mechanics of plot”.
When Paul finished reading the script for the first time, he picked it up again immediately. “I felt like I’d lost something, or I had both lost and found something at the same time,” the Irish actor says in a solo interview a couple of hours later. “There are moments in this movie that are like daggers to my heart. And I don’t think you need to be a father to relate to them.”
In addition to utilising the natural beauty of its stunning coastal setting, Aftersun pulls from a seemingly endless well of pre-internet package holiday nostalgia — multicoloured hair wraps, arcade games, snapshots from a chunky underwater camera — to mask the psychic trouble simmering beneath the surface. While the film is ultimately a work of fiction, it can be described as “emotionally autobiographical”, Charlotte says. “I used my own memories and anecdotes and details from childhood to form the outline of the film. The characters were, initially, loosely based on me and my dad, but at a certain point they evolved away from that.”
Here, Charlotte, Frankie and Paul tell us about working with one another on what’s sure to be the most heartbreaking movie of the year, feeling a powerful affinity with their characters, favourite ice cream flavours and more.
On their go-to nostalgia watches
Charlotte: I probably reach more for television than film to be totally honest. In chasing nostalgia, you choose the point of time that you’re looking to feel — for me that ends up being throwing on an episode of Friends or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I feel like I have a little bit of a different relationship to film in that sense. Unless it’s Christmas and Love Actually is on.
Paul: Probably Indiana Jones. Or Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I remember that being such a thing when I was 11 or 12, and I just thought it was the funniest thing on planet Earth. It’s normally things that my parents liked to watch when they were growing up or in their twenties — that’s what they would stick on the telly.
Frankie: Love Peppa Pig, love Paw Patrol, love Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom.
On working with one another
Paul: Frankie is just a machine. She’s colourful, smart, fast — like she works fast. She takes and gives a lot of energy. There’s something really fair about Frankie, if you don’t match her level, she’ll just pummel you. So, you match it. I just adore her. And Charlotte has got to be one of the best directors working right now: she’s so meticulous in how she writes, but then is so free with how she directs on the day. That’s not something you always encounter, [sometimes] there’s no room for any flexibility. But Charlotte’s the opposite of that. It was kind of a lightning in a bottle situation, just a really good one.
Frankie: Working with Paul is amazing. He is such a good actor, and so kind to me. I get on with him really well. But he’s just an easy-to-get-along-with sort of person — he’s an easy going guy.
Charlotte: Paul’s name had come up early in the process, but he had been unavailable because he was shooting God’s Creatures. When our dates shifted, his availability was suddenly open. And so he recorded an audition of himself dancing in a kitchen: that became one of the early scenes in the film, when he’s smoking a cigarette and listening to Blur. He was incredibly thoughtful and responsive to the script and, I think, understood my intentions in a way that few other people had. [Casting Sophie] was a long process, like six months. Eventually we met 16 people in person in Glasgow, and one of them was Frankie, who came in—
Frankie: And blew you away with my amazing cartwheels?
Charlotte: Talked over me, drove me crazy, blew me away with her amazing cartwheels and pretty outstanding abilities. There was one exercise we did early on, where our casting director was playing the role of a mother — the intention given to Frankie was that she hadn’t got something she’d wanted, so her mum was kind of coaxing her to come to dinner. And Frankie sat down with a stillness that would surprise you based on who you’re witnessing right now. A tear just rolled down her cheek. It was this really intense expression of emotion, though she was doing very little, that was so impressive.
The highs of being on-location abroad
Charlotte: I tried to protect a few hours on a Sunday afternoon to sit on the beach and chill out, which was successful up until a few weeks into shooting. Then it became all-work-all-the-time, but it was all-work-all-the-time in an unbelievably stunning place. I’d swim in the sea every morning. The first two weeks I was doing technical prep for the most part, and I’d spend an hour or two with Frankie and Paul in the morning, but otherwise it was about giving them time to get to know each other and build a connection, and I think that looked a bit more like a holiday.
Frankie: It was two months in Turkey! It was an amazing holiday. I got to swim in the sea, play in the pool, go out, explore, get ice cream: strawberry gelato. Or a sorbet. I don’t like the chocolate flavoured ones. It’s good for the first two tastes, and then it’s sickening.
Charlotte: I disagree. I would take a chocolate ice cream over a bar of chocolate any day of the week.
And the complications (or lack thereof) of empathising with their characters
Paul: A lot of the public-facing Calum was really fun to play. And then there’s stuff when he’s alone or in private. The other characters that I’ve played before felt like younger men, and Calum is very much a young man, but there is something more mature about him. That shifted the experience for me. It’s the first character I’ve played that has a degree of responsibility that extends beyond himself. I just love Calum. I think he’s a really impressive man. There’s something very noble to me about him.
Frankie: If Sophie was real, I would definitely be her best friend. Because she’s cool — apart from when she’s cringey — but most of the time, she’s cool.
Aftersun is out in limited US theatres now, arriving in UK cinemas on November 18.
Credits
Photography Sophie Davidson