“It’s surreal seeing that it’s successfully connected with so many people”, the director told Zavvi. “But when I hear that it’s ‘broken’ people? Well, I feel a little apologetic about that!”
The New York-based Scottish filmmaker has delivered one of the year’s most widely acclaimed films in her “personal, but not autobiographical” coming-of-age drama.
Paul Mescal and newcomer Frankie Corio star as father and daughter on holiday in Turkey during the late nineties, the film unfolding like snapshots of a memory so vividly realised audiences can easily imagine themselves there – something which makes the changing dynamics of the central relationship all the more powerful when they come into focus.
“I never went on this holiday and these characters aren’t direct correlations of me and my dad”, Wells continued. “But it was the starting point, thinking about the holidays I had with him and my relationship to him, that helped me form a skeleton outline of the script.
"You build on that in a way that serves the story, but the feeling it goes to is ultimately very much my own, even if what comes before isn’t my direct experience.”
Mescal, who delivers his best performance yet as young father Calum, was initially unable to star because of a scheduling conflict which was thankfully resolved. He was Wells’ top pick for the lead role, but to find his young co-star, an extensive audition process needed to be undertaken, with the director seeing more than 800 actresses in auditions. However, she instinctually knew who would be cast from the very moment of her first audition.
“From that first audition, Frankie just really blew us away. She had this goofy, exuberant charm, and a real ability to act in a way that was quite unexpected, which I think is difficult for someone so young – she could transition between moods very quickly, and could just shake it off and move on.
"She never had a full script, and I think part of the reason is because we didn’t need to share one. I just knew that in the recesses of her mind, this dialogue existed, and she could recall it with a freshness that made the performance feel as natural as possible”.
Once brought on board, the now-11-year-old had just two weeks of rehearsals with Mescal, to form a believable father/daughter bond for the screen.
Corio told Zavvi: “Paul is just so easy to get along with – I feel like we could have done this even if we only had a single day of rehearsals right before we started filming. But our rehearsals were great, as we spent the time bonding like a real father and daughter on holiday; we went swimming, he taught me how to play pool, and then we ate literally every sugary food you can think of.
"We were besties! Although he didn’t properly understand how much things cost in Turkey – the ice cream came to 70 lira and he only had four with him, so there was a bit of an awkward wait for him to be sent the money to pay for that...”
The finished film may be emotionally intense, but you’d never know from filming it; being in a holiday resort ensured that the shoot always stayed a “playful” one, with both stars having fun pushing each other into the pool throughout. As Corio remembers: “Charlotte always said that we’d never be able to push her into the pool – but one day, she said that just before she took her phone out of her pocket and put it on the table. I thought that was an invitation to throw her straight in!”
The release of the film marks the end of a seven-year journey for Wells, who began work on the screenplay shortly after finishing her debut short film back in 2015.
“My experience was like that of the Charlie Kaufman quote, that writers are the people for whom writing is the most difficult”, she continued. “I had started writing after my first short, but it was a difficult project to wrap my head around.
"I was finding my way through a story that went from feeling more autobiographical to entirely fictional, and it kept weaving in and out of both as I was writing. It was only when I cast the film that I felt the first big step away from the script – suddenly, there were people standing in front of me who could lift this off the page, and transform it into its own thing, which was effectively rewritten during production and the edit”.
One of the other crucial factors of Aftersun found in the edit was the soundtrack, a mixtape of carefully selected nineties tunes that will transport you back to the decade, from the likes of Blur and REM to the shall we say, less critically beloved likes of Steps and Chumbawumba. It’s so perfectly integrated into the film, I was surprised to discover that each needle drop wasn’t organically included in the screenplay.
“The credit for this goes to Lucy Bright, our music supervisor. I’d built a playlist over many years of writing, but there were only a couple of songs directly written into the script – Losing My Religion was always there as the karaoke track, for example. But she compiled several playlists over the course of making this film for us to work with, which helped in the edit, as did working with our editor Blair McClendon.
"He’s American, so has absolutely no interest in British pop music from the nineties, so he’d always just pull in whatever felt appropriate and wasn’t bound by chasing a feeling of nostalgia. The use of Under Pressure in that final dance sequence came from him – we didn’t actually have a music cue written in the script, just the stage direction that music was playing.
"We never had anything specific in mind. When we were filming, we were using Don’t You Forget About Me by Simple Minds just to create a mood, but we never had the intention to use it, especially after having to listen to it about 600 times while shooting that scene! When we replaced it with Under Pressure, it was this moment of divine inspiration; it worked so well in a way that was completely unexpected, and I’m saying that as a fan of both David Bowie and Freddie Mercury”.
Now that Aftersun is finally gracing cinema screens after a successful festival run, both Wells and Corio are looking forward to new projects, but the young actress has been warned that not every shoot will be as fun as spending a few weeks in a Turkish holiday resort.
“I think my next film will star Frankie, but this time, we'll be shooting in Antarctica for six months”, laughed Wells. Regardless of whatever the pair do decide to do next, you’ll want to be first in line for it after seeing Aftersun.
Aftersun is in UK cinemas from Friday 18th November.
For all things pop culture, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
