Of course, so close to my ranking deadline, I didn't come here to tell you what I thought of it. I came here to tell you something I noticed when I went to add it to Letterboxd.
There is another Aftersun, and it also came out in 2022.
To think that the movies could go some 130 years without there being a movie whose title was this exact contract of two otherwise unrelated words, and then there would be two in the same year.
Of course, this could be one of those cases of intentional confusion, where they try to get you to rent the movie Transmorphers because you are not very bright and you thought it said Transformers. But it doesn't seem that likely, considering that the Aftersun directed by Lluis Galter had its first festival appearance back on May 1st, 20 days before Charlotte Wells' version debuted at Cannes. Plus it has this logline on IMDB, which is quite different than the plot of Wells':
"Summertime. In a camping, three little girls listen to an old mysterious story about a missing kid. They start to investigate."
I love that "in a camping." I think that's the first time I've seen something on IMDB that was obviously added by someone whose first language was not English, then not corrected by someone else before I had a chance to see it.
The confusion is real. While only 53 people on Letterboxd have submitted a star rating for Galter's Aftersun, compared to the approaching 200,000 for Wells' version, all the reviews that are in English seem to indicate the Transformers/Transmorphers situation befell the writer of said review, if only at the point of picking it out on Letterboxd.
One starts out "Very mature and moving portrait of a father and daughter on vacation." Another states simply "I don't know that I will ever recover from the image this film reflects about me," which could be about the other version, but I doubt it. One starts with "Frankie Corio is a star, she gives such a great performance." I have to assume Frankie Corio is not also in the other version.
Then there are a few that point out the mistake, one saying "Oh my gosh! I've stumbled on the wrong Aftersun movie!" It's possible that person left the comment without having seen Galter's version, but it appears this one didn't: "Thought we were going to see Paul Mescal's movie but happy to have stumbled upon this viewing with a Q&A with the director." So in this case, obviously that's not a very good job of vetting by the viewer, but it also sounds as though the people who set up that screening might have knowingly capitalized on the critical acclaim for the other movie.
The thing is, this is not the only 2022 movie that is accidentally blurring the distinct identity of Wells' Aftersun, with both a similar title and similar thematic material.
Earlier this year, on the plane to America, I saw a movie called Sundown, starring Tim Roth. Like Aftersun, it is also set on a family holiday in a tropical paradise. (Can Turkey be considered tropical? I didn't realize Aftersun was set in Turkey until the very end.) Roth's character's family also comes from Britain, but they're in Acapulco, and the family includes his sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and nieces and nephews. Without going into the full plot, I'll just say this also involves a mental health crisis by Roth's character, with some tragic occurrences in the story. Plus that title is basically a synonym for Aftersun -- a true Transmophers/Transformers situation, had Sundown not had its original release back in September of 2021 at Venice.
But the similarity certainly seems obvious if you just look at the posters:
Well I'll end some of the suspense and say that Aftersun is going to end up higher on my chart than Sundown ... and that I won't see the other Aftersun in time to rank it, though that would be funny.
How much higher? You'll find out on Tuesday.
