Sure I imagined Paul Mescal dancing to Love My Way from Call Me By Your Name. On that note, there is a shot of him sunbathing with the earphones on in one of the scenes.
Paul Mescal sitting on the edge of the bed and crying alone ruined me a bit. Talk about summer and the memories that get made during the season — that feeling of nothing making much sense after that and you are sitting in your room, staring outside the window, with some melancholic score running inside your mind. A time that you’d want to go back to and relive, immerse yourself in the warmth of the bougainvilleas and the blue water. The entire experience of aftersun is like making a memory. As you live your moments, it’s like they are getting captured in a poloroid, and once a clear picture of those moments emerge, it is an indication that those moments are something that you can’t go back to and they are mere memories. Just like how Celine from Before Midnight puts it — Still there. Still there. Still there. Gone.
Liked the shot of Sophie (an amazing Frankie Corio) holding a magazine whose cover read “Girl talks Love” while she’s asking how her mom and dad still say “Love You” to each other, when they are not together anymore. And that unsettling ending scene where we see a grown up Sophie still remembering her dad as that young, energetic person, who masked all the baggage he carried, dancing to the rhythm, at the far end of the crowd. The sweet and at the same time, haunting memories that would always be a part of her.
Cinema Paradesio 