“Frankie walked into the room and started performing in a way that is just wholly unexpected from a kid,” Wells says. One thing that made this easier was that Corio, making her debut, exceeded all expectations with her seemingly effortless naturalism. but I also love the points in making films where you have to place absolute trust in other people.” “They had spoken on Zoom and I’d met Frankie twice, but I’d never met Paul in person before we got to Turkey. “It depends entirely on that,” affirms Wells. Doesn’t a film like this rely heavily on the chemistry of its leads? (This week he was nominated for best actor for Aftersun in the European Film Awards.) However, this too started as a gamble, with Mescal unable to meet his young Scottish co-star Frankie Corio - now 12 - before the shoot due to pandemic restrictions. “An amazing person to have in my corner,” enthuses Wells, who lives in New York.Īnother was the presence of Irish actor Paul Mescal, whose performance in the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People captivated housebound viewers during the Covid lockdown of spring 2020. One was the name Barry Jenkins on the credits, the Oscar-winning director of Moonlight serving as a producer. To those reading the runes, there were signs that Aftersun might become something special. Playing it so low-key shows a remarkable confidence and maturity. With debut features serving as a calling card for their makers, they are usually flashier. What fascinates is how Wells frames the everyday to reveal a subtext of which Sophie herself is only dimly aware. Yet surface is the least interesting thing about the film. Calum and Sophie spend their days sunbathing and swimming, eating and drinking, little more. When you make a film that is so avoidant of exposition, there is a fear that it might not be logical.”įrankie Corio and Paul Mescal in Wells’s acclaimed debut film ‘Aftersun’Īftersun, on the surface at least, follows a thirty-ish father and his 11-year-old daughter on a humdrum package holiday to Turkey. It was a huge surprise that people liked it, were moved by it and found it legible. “I’m a person who constantly thinks ahead, so I’m not sure why I hadn’t, but I hadn’t. “It had never crossed my mind what would happen when the credits rolled,” the Edinburgh native says in a gentle burr, her voice occasionally fading to a murmur. When we meet during the London Film Festival, she is still processing the Cannes experience, where she came away with a jury prize in the Critics’ Week section. Certainly nothing so obvious is to be found in Wells’s beautifully understated feature debut Aftersun, which premiered in Cannes to ecstatic reviews and was recently nominated for 16 British Independent Film Awards. As a metaphor for the difficulty of giving vent to painful emotions, a spout clogged with leaves is almost too apt.
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