Aftersun is one of the most heart-rending surprises of 2022, a beautiful debut by Charlotte Wells unanimously praised ever since it premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival. The movie is the story of Sophie as she reflects on a trip she took with her father twenty years earlier. Between memories both real and imagined and heartwarming film footage, Sophie tries to reconnect with her past and reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't.
Aftersun is an emotional vacation movie guaranteed to make viewers cry, giving rise to important discussions on fatherhood, guilt, and the impact of long-lost memories. To fill the void left by this devastating story, there are a few great vacation movies that share a similar message or style.
Hunt For The Wilderpeople (2016)
One of the most enthralling movies by Taika Waititi, Hunt For The Wilderpeople is a great story about two lonesome souls gradually becoming buddies and finding the connection they never knew they wanted for their lives.
The film follows a rebellious kid and his grumpy foster uncle on the run from a national manhunt. Aftersun deals with how humanity is never really ready for anything, but we can always count on our capacity to adapt, especially with someone by our side. Hunt For The Wilderpeople delivers a similar take, just as sensitive but much funnier and easy-going.
All Hands On Deck (2020)
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Just like Aftersun does with the fickleness of Calum and Sophie's father-and-daughter relationship, All Hands On Deck captures the ups and downs of a good vacation like no other movie, offering a creative depiction of how happiness and sadness affect the estate of things. When one is happy, everything seems to come at ease and time goes by fast. When one is sad, the sentiment hits much harder because one constantly thinks about the pleasure it deprives.
The movie handles these two opposites by balancing great bonds turning into meaningful friendships with frustrated expectations over a heartbreak. The film doesn't really have a plot and simply follows three totally different colleagues as they find trouble and joy in a last-second trip to the French countryside.
Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
Just like Aftersun, Y Tu Mamá También delicately shouts out to beautiful bonds lost with time and offers its characters a chance to look back into the past with longing and pride.
Alfonso Cuarón is one of the best active Mexican directors working on Hollywood productions, including Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children Of Men, but both of his Mexican movies offer delicate, realistic depictions of his culture and traditions. Y Tu Mamá También is an underrated road trip movie about two naive young men who set out with an older woman to learn in practice what's to know about friendship, sex, and life in general.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Little Miss Sunshine gathers a family made of quirky, contrasting characters who gather for a road trip across California for their ambitious little Olive to compete in a prestigious beauty pageant.
Although the Hoovers are a family, each of their members was lost in their own inner world until the road trip forces them to interact and actually understand each other. In the process, repressed feelings and long-term frustrations will come to shore and force them to come to terms with themselves. The sentimental distance between family members is something prevalent in Aftersun and adds up to the film's main conflict, but different from Little Miss Sunshine, the matter drags for too long until it's too late to do something about it, leaving characters with no option but to look into the past.
Captain Fantastic (2016)
In Captain Fantastic, a single father living with his six young kids in the wilderness is forced to assimilate his family back into society without sacrificing his valuable moral values.
Aftersun and Captain Fantastic offer an in-depth look into fatherhood and the responsibilities that come with it. Being a father isn't simply about giving love, shelter, and teaching what's right; it's important to know that a father can pass on all their insecurities and fears to their children. In Aftersun, Calum is clearly struggling with the responsibilities of being a father at young age, and although the clues about his remorse are subtle in the film, many details point at it and play a major role in the film. On the other, Mortensen's character in Captain Fantastic attempts to compensate for the damage he transferred to his children by isolating them from society.
Call Me By Your Name (2017)
Call Me By Your Name is one of the best movies set in the '80s. It perfectly captures the beauty of the Italian countryside as a seventeen-year-old boy engages in a secret relationship with an older man who happens to work for his father.
It might not be the case for everyone, but some vacations offer life-changing experiences capable of dictating the course of someone's life. In Aftersun, Sophie's mesmerizing trip with her father helped her try to reconcile with the man her father once was, while in the case of Call Me By Your Name, Thimotée Chalamet's character goes through a beautiful journey of sexual awakening. The two films also share a powerful gut punch at the end.
The Loneliest Planet (2011)
The Loneliest Planet is a moving relationship story about the fragility of life and how seemingly unimportant details can change our lives forever, for better or for worse. The film follows a couple enjoying a backpacking trip across the Caucasus Mountains until a momentary misstep threatens to change everything that keeps them together.
The Loneliest Planet and Aftersun want to convey the same message: nothing happens out of nowhere, there's always a build-up. No one falls out of love in one hour, no friendship is destroyed in a matter of minutes, and every ending needs a story even if the narrative is told only through details. It's always there if you see it.
The Green Ray (1986)
While Aftersun reimagines the trip Sophie took when she was younger as she attempts to find meaning in a relationship that no longer exists, The Green Ray follows the lonely and introverted Delphine trying to come to terms with her loneliness and insecurities during a depressing summer vacation.
One of the most acclaimed French directors of all time, melancholic vacations filled with peculiar characters and existential crises seem to be Eric Rohmer's specialty. In both Aftersun and The Green Ray, the protagonist, a woman, must contemplate their reality alone, and each movie manages to delve deep into their psyche with tenderness and respect.
Reminiscences Of A Journey To Lithuania (1972)
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Aftersun often fills the gaps missing from its linear narrative with beautiful miniDV footage; something that will be of major importance to the protagonist's older self as she recollects the nuances of her trip with her father. The way these images are inserted in the film summons the style of revered experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas.
Reminiscences Of A Journey To Lithuania is one of the most heartwarming and beautiful movies of his career; an intimate documentary featuring Mekas himself and his trip back to his rural hometown in Lithuania, where he tries to reconnect with faces from his childhood and the family he misses so much; a beautiful journey about memory just like Aftersun.
The Lost Daughter (2021)
Olivia Colman plays a lonely woman on vacation who becomes obsessed with the relationship young mother and her daughter, unleashing bruises from the past and serious consequences for both her and the young woman.
The Lost Daughter is a story about mother and daughter, even though only one of them can be seen, with imagination playing an important role in interpreting and facing painful memories. Just like in Aftersun, the protagonist makes use of long-lost tokens in attempts to reconnect with her past, trying to understand where exactly things went wrong and who's to blame. Nothing in The Lost Daughter is clear to the audience because the protagonist's mind keeps playing tricks on herself.