'Aftersun' movie will make you wonder how much you really know your parents

Do we ever really know our parents?

This is the question that director Charlotte Wells asks in "Aftersun," a portrait of the relationship we have with our parents, the time we spend with them and how people can experience the same moments in completely different ways. The movie has all the intensity and melancholy you expect from an A24 film.

Through home videos pieced together with vivid memories, the film chronicles a vacation that 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) takes with her father, 31-year-old Calum (Paul Mescal).

We find out Sophie's parents are separated and she lives with her mom, so this vacation is a sort of tradition for the father-daughter duo, who are sometimes mistaken for siblings, because of Calum's age as well as their casual relationship.

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Both are facing pivotal times in their lives, with Sophie entering her teen years and Calum coming to terms with the responsibility of being a serious adult and father. He's also grappling with how quickly Sophie is growing up, especially because she clearly wants to be like him and already is in a lot of ways, which scares him.

He masks it fairly well around Sophie (most of the time) but he’s suffering from depression and anxiety, which he uses both alcohol and tai chi to cope with. He's guilt-ridden by the fact that Sophie is starting to show similar warning signs, and that she occasionally has to take care of him when it should be the other way around.

There’s an uneasiness about "Aftersun," as if you keep expecting something bad to happen. It appears Calum feels that way, too. He is intent on teaching Sophie things like self-defense.

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Piecing together Sophie's life

Throughout the film, there are flashes of another scene, which are almost impossible to make out, of Sophie as an adult in some sort of crowded room. There’s a man in a striped shirt there, and you don’t see clearly until the end that it’s the same shirt her dad is wearing when they say goodbye at the end of the trip.

We also get occasional glimpses into Sophie's life as an adult on what is presumably her 31st birthday, remembering this trip and watching the home videos from it of her father, frozen in time at the same age. It's not clear if the trip is the last time they see each other, but it is implied that he has since passed.

Sophie is trying to piece together the circumstances surrounding the vacation with the hindsight and knowledge she has as an adult and a parent herself. She wishes she could meet Calum now as he was then, and she's struggling to fit together how she saw him as a kid with her perception of him now.

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How do we learn to understand our parents?

Charlotte Wells is an award-winning director known for 2017 shorts including "Laps" and "Blue Christmas." According to IMDb, "Aftersun" is her first feature-length film.

Paul Mescal, known for "Normal People" and "The Lost Daughter," is a convincing young dad and Frankie Corio is stunning in her breakout role. The movie also features noted choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall, who briefly plays Sophie as an adult.

"Aftersun" is well done and equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming, but I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, especially if you're not a fan of a slow-burn, independent-style film without a clear-cut plot.

While the film is somewhat of a coming-of-age story, it's more of a snapshot of a moment in time, a tribute to father-daughter relationships and the feeling of looking back on your childhood and realizing what your parents were going through, how much they loved you, and how you'll never really know who they were.

'Aftersun' 3.5 stars

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Director: Charlotte Wells.

Cast: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio and Celia Rowlson-Hall.

Rating: R for some language and brief sexual material.

Note: Available for pre-order on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play or Vudu Fandango.

Contact the reporter at alexis.potter@azcentral.com or follow the reporter on Twitter @alexispotter_.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'Aftersun' asks: Can you ever really know your parents fully?