In AFTERSUN, Charlotte Wells lets Queen and Bowie tell the story

Charlotte Wells's wildly acclaimed feature-length debut AFTERSUN follows a father and daughter on a vacation where much is implied but little is said...unless you listen close to the soundtrack.

In this special bonus episode, Wells tells host Rico Gagliano about the '80s and '90s-era needle drops that pepper the film, from Bran Van 3000 to the accidental discovery of a Queen track that suddenly spoke volumes. They also dive into the movie’s subtle performances, and try to unpack why this intimate, bittersweet story is pulling in audiences from Gen Z to Barack Obama.

AFTERSUN is showing in select cinemas in the UK, Germany, Mexico, and many other countries. And it will stream exclusively on MUBI starting January 6th in the UK, Latin America, India, and many other countries. It will come to MUBI in Germany, Spain, and more countries later this year as well.

MUBI is a global streaming service, production company and film distributor. A place to discover and watch beautiful, interesting, incredible films. A new hand-picked film arrives on MUBI, every single day. From iconic directors, to emerging auteurs. All carefully chosen by MUBI’s curators.

Transcript

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Which of the pop songs in this movie were most essential to you? Where you're like, "I need this song at this moment"and I don't care what it takes to get the rights"? There honestly wasn't. There were none, I don't think, that I was willing to kind of die on the hill for until <i>Under Pressure.</i> Which was a very unexpected discovery, but also one that the prospect of not getting seven months after having been working with it in the cut became the one I would have died on the hill for, I think. Interesting, we'll say at the beginning of this episode that we are maybe giving away spoilers. Do you wanna describe the usage of that song in the movie? No! That is Scottish film-maker Charlotte Wells. Yeah, in her debut film,<i>Aftersun</i>, she's always careful never to reveal too much, too soon. It's the story of an 11-year-old named Sophie who takes a lazy summer vacation in Turkey with her beloved dad, Calum, back in the '90s. But between happy, sunny days by the pool and karaoke at night, it slowly, slowly dawns on her, and us, something's wrong with Calum. A sadness neither of them really knows how to talk about, or can even really understand. I am Rico Gagliano and welcome back to the MUBI podcast. MUBI's the curated streaming service that elevates great cinema. On this show we tell you the stories behind great cinema. Season three is coming soon. Meanwhile, today, another special episode to tide you over, it's my interview with Charlotte Wells about <i>Aftersun</i>. It's a heartbreaker that won Best Film and six more trophies at this year's British Independent Film Awards. It's up for five honors at the Independent Spirit Awards, including Best First Feature, and it's in select theaters right now in the UK, Germany, Mexico and a lot of other countries. And since season three of this show is gonna be all about great songs that were used in great movies, Wells is just the perfect film-maker to talk to right now. There are tons of scenes in <i>Aftersun</i> that spotlight pop songs of the '80s and '90s and they're more than setting the tone of the era. If you listen close, they're getting across what the characters can't or won't put into words. Case in point, yes, <i>Under Pressure</i>, of course written and performed by the band Queen along with David Bowie back in 1981, which plays under a scene I finally convinced Wells to at least describe in the vaguest possible way. It is used in a dance sequence in which reality and something a little bit outside of reality intercepts, and it is the climax of the film. Yeah, it's like Sophie's watching her father dancing and she can almost see what's going on emotionally beneath that. Yeah. It was in the cut for a long time, that music, and it was very unexpected, it was a discovery in the edit. It was a moment of madness late one night in the edit room. And once it was there, it became very hard to imagine without. It had an unexpected power that would have been very hard to let go of. I'll say this, watching that scene, and it is the final scene of the movie, even in the moment, you're right, I was thinking, this is the most perfect song, no other song would work as well, that I can think of, I do wonder what was that bolt of inspiration, you're saying that it was the middle of the night and you just suddenly, in a moment of madness, threw it in there. Who's ideas was it, yours? Yeah, there's just a huge power. I mean, Freddie Mercury and David Bowie have unbelievably phenomenal voices, obviously, I don't need to say that out loud, and just hearing them go for one another in what sounded like a very intense recording session, was just one of those things I would listen to from time to time as a kind of bolt of inspiration. And I think that's why I brought it in, just searching for that feeling of inspiration and so I brought it into the cut, just so I could play it from time to time, you know. And it worked. You said that you just carry it around with you as a point of inspiration, has that been for years? Yeah, I fall down these musical rabbit holes on YouTube when I'm procrastinating and...- Me too!- I used to feel more guilty about it than I do now,'cause it's obviously led to good things! So now it's easy to look back on it and claim that it's an integral part of the writing process, when really it's me just looking to do anything but write. I'm gonna use that from now on, whenever I'm doing it.- Yeah.- Be like, "Look, Charlotte Wells did it"and it really resulted in a fine piece of film-making." It's true! Yeah, it's a very happy accident and the film wouldn't work without it and the lyrics ended up being, like, I did not bring that song in thinking about the lyrics, at least not consciously, and they end up being the most obvious piece of exposition in the film if you so desire to take it that way. That's what I was talking about, lyrically that song is saying what has been unspoken throughout the entire film, it's a very subtle film emotionally, in a lot of ways, and that's the closest you get to saying it. Yeah, which is funny, because I don't think I acknowledged that, even after it had been in the cut for a really long time, until my cinematographer saw it and he said, "Are you really gonna do this?" You know, it's just so... outrageous! And obvious and we thought about it, and ultimately we said yes.♪ It's the terror of knowing ♪♪ what this world is about ♪♪ Watching some good friend screaming ♪♪ let me out! ♪I think one of the things that saves it from being too obvious and in your face is because you change the music. You strip out the music at one point and just let the vocals sit there.♪ Turned away from it all, ♪♪ like a blind man. ♪♪ Sat on the fence but it don't work. ♪It becomes part of the tapestry of the movie instead of just "I dropped in this song that everybody knows". Yeah, and the score that Oliver wrote for it is doing a lot of work there too, in terms of meeting it at points and working against it at others. There's that beautiful moment where Freddie Mercury's vocals gives way to Oliver's cello and Oliver's cello takes over.♪ Can't we give ourselves one more chance ♪♪ Why can't we give love ♪♪ one more chance ♪I wrote this diagram that was two wave forms almost and where they both intercept. You actually mapped it out, graphically? I did, I mapped it out while having breakfast at my grandparent's house, right before I went to meet Oliver and I sent it to him. And I think it was useful in illustrating to him how much I anticipated that track evolving, that it wasn't just one thing but almost five distinct pieces to that scene and what the music was doing in each. You're taking a pre-existing piece of music but then you're orchestrating it through the scene. Yeah, there's almost five acts in the scene.♪ This is our last dance ♪♪ This is ourselves ♪Let's talk a little bit more about the themes of the movie in general, you have said in other interviews I've read with you that the thing all your movies have in common, this debut feature and your shorts, is that they're about people living in denial. And why is that? What draws you to that as an idea? Yeah, it's funny, for a long time I thought this film sat apart from that, but was reminded by somebody that that's not true. At all. I'm not setting out to make the same film every time, I think nobody is, and yet we do. I don't know why I am drawn to that, it's probably a question for my therapist. But I am, and I'm interested in how people contradict themselves and ways in which people are messy and don't do what they say... I mean, it's more than just that they're messy, it's that they're messy and they don't wanna face it. Who does? Who does? I guess that's true. I have to say, it's an incredibly intimate movie. In some ways, you could have made this into a play, it's very cinematic, I'm not saying that, but it's so intimate. Good save! And it's proving very popular, which I think is wonderful and kind of pleasantly surprising in a world of Marvel movies. But I've been trying to figure out what about it is resonating and there are a lot of things, but I do feel there's a sense a lot of people are waking up to that we've all been living in denial about a lot of things, like on a global level. Oh, interesting. Maybe it captures a vibe of "we should have addressed a lot of problems sooner". Yeah, I appreciate your characterization of the film and everything you just said there, and it is surprising that people seem to have liked it in the numbers that they have. The experience I had in making short films were that they made a meaningful connection with a small number of people and that was always enough for me. As my producer likes to say, I would have been happy if only one person had liked the film, which isn't entirely true, I probably hoped for more than one. I don't know why that is, I think it's a combination of different things. And perhaps that's one of them, I've never really considered there may be something to this moment in time that plays into that. I mean, it does occur to me, actually a lot of the songs you've chosen are either about denial or they're about waking up from denial. Are they? Have you thought about that? Was that by design? No, it wasn't. What songs were you thinking of? There's a great, one of my favourite needle drops in this movie because it's a deeper cut, is Bran Van 3000's <i>Drinking In LA.</i> Oh, yeah. That song, cos I remember when it came out, is about someone spending the day with their friend who supposedly wants some help working out the plot of a screenplay. But then realizing at the end of the day all they did was get drunk. They'd been in denial all day long. Yeah, these are things I did become gradually aware of over the course of making the film.♪ I woke up again this morning ♪♪ with the sun in my eyes ♪♪ when Mike came over ♪♪ with a script surprise, ♪♪ a mafioso story with a twist ♪♪ A "To Wong Foo, Julie Newmar" hitch ♪♪ Get your ass out of bed, he said ♪♪ I'll explain it on the way ♪♪ But we did nothing ♪♪ Absolutely nothing that day ♪♪ and I say ♪♪ What the hell am I ♪♪ doing drinking in LA at 26... ♪I love that needle drop, it's probably my favourite in terms of pure joy. I don't have any special connection to that song, other than I love when it comes on. Really? It isn't hugely spotlighted, it's mostly in the background of this scene, a couple are making out and some older kids goad Sophie into pushing them into the pool. It actually has its moment in the film which Jovan, our sound designer, kind of showed me at midnight or 1am in the sound room when I was desperately trying to go home, which would have been an early night for us and he said, "Oh, just listen to what I've done here" and he basically put this underwater filter on it and he allowed it to play over them underwater as Sophie pushes these teenagers into the pool. I hadn't anticipated it carrying over into that scene and it did and it was so exciting, it's one of those moments where... it's one of those moments you do this for, where you see something or hear something and it causes you to levitate. I deeply resented he showed that to me at 1am.- Because they get the stamp lock...- I couldn't leave the room for another two hours because I was stressed about the fact I thought we'd only cleared it for a very specific duration which turned out not to be the case, we actually did have the flexibility to do it. But I thought I'd just been shown this perfect thing that we wouldn't be able to use because it was so late in the process. But fortunately we did and it's so good, it's... I love that moment in the film. Did you always like that song, or was that something your editor brought to you? No, I always liked that song. And in the UK I knew it because I think it was on one of those NOW compilations that pulls together the best of summer music. It was definitely on a compilation- that I discovered it.- It's a great song. Oh, that makes sense 'cause this is about a summer vacation, it's a great summer song. Yeah, I can see the cover of this album in my mind. Summer Hits, or something. Another thing that's attractive to me about it, 'cause I'm a traveler, I'm kind of fascinated by the specific milieu of this movie which is the world of British middle class package vacations.- Yup.- Which I know you've said in other interviews you've experienced these as a kid, right?- Indeed.- For those who haven't seen the movie, or don't know what I'm talking about, could you describe what these are? Yes, they are hotels of varying sizes and degrees of niceness that cater to not just British, but certainly European tourists and what's interesting is different regions have different flavours of them. And the British flavour is a strong and prevalent one which exists all over Europe, particularly in the south of Spain and Portugal and Turkey. There are these towns in Turkey, on a specific stretch of coast that really do cater to British tourists in terms of food and flag and everything in between. This film takes over place over two hotels, one that is more modest and one that's a little bit bigger, but both very much within this space, you're not suddenly at a luxury 5-star hotel. You went on some of these vacations as a kid, did you go to Turkey? I did go to Turkey as a kid and I'd love to say it's unrelated to the film, but I think one of the reasons that I set it in Turkey is because I have this memory and I have a lot of photographs from that holiday. It was a familiar place to write from, a place I had some memory of, although very, very vague, to be honest. I think I was about 10 or 11. Most of the memories are the photographs. That's kind of surprising to me because it feels extremely specific, it feels like that movie was made by someone who remembers every single detail of that. But on the other hand, there is this hazy, everything's refracted through memory quality. Yeah, I think the specificity is partly universal to all holidays, that's the thing about these British holiday resorts is for the most part you could be anywhere. It could be Turkey, it could be Spain, it could be Greece, it could be wherever else. It is funny though because at first, by design you don't really see outside the hotel- till later in the film.- Yeah. And at first I was thinking to myself,"Oh, what a smart move", I wasn't even sure if you'd shot it in Turkey, it was like you can make this movie set in Turkey but not even have to travel there, good idea for a low budget movie. Yeah, sadly I didn't have my eye closely enough on the low budget movie when writing this. But it's true, and in fact it was more true in the script that it ended up being in the film and that was because ultimately I made decisions that best served the story instead of some idea that I had had. But the idea that I did have was that it was very enclosed. That the bigger of the two hotels, you really can't see the street, like it's its own ecosystem. But in fact, at the end of day one, you see them run into the sea. So, in the script that happened later. Why did you want that, that feeling that the hotel was kind of enclosed? Because I was interested in the moment that they break out of it. I thought a lot about the sea, I wanted to withhold the sea, the image of the sea. Which is why I shot this scene of them at the sea with no idea of where it would go in the film. And it ended up being a moment that really had the sense of being in a new place, of joy, I think, more than anything else, which was so essential to what I was trying to capture and yet we were kind of light on, honestly, those moments. And so we had the shot of them running into the sea and that's actually a change that was made right at the end of the edit. It's interesting, though, that you mentioned joy. That was something essential that you capture, that joy, because it would be so easy to lampoon these sorts of vacations,- and make fun of them...- Yeah. As being in a way sad, you go all of this distance and spend all of this money and then you just sit in a hotel. You wanted to find the joy in that, why? Yeah, the film's pretty earnest, there is no satire and judgment, more importantly. And sometimes when I read people writing about the film, there is a sense of judgment to this place. But the truth is, these were the trips I took growing up and I was nothing but grateful to be there. It's time away, it's time in the sun, you've all of these activities at hand and you're with family, which in an ideal world you find some pleasure in being with. That was the story I was interested in telling, there were certainly many details about these places that fascinated me. The setting of the film was not an accident by any stretch, but it was this sense of fun and enjoyment and warmth between these characters which was the most essential thing to portray, because without it, you'd feel no loss at the end of the film.- Paradise Lost, in a way.- Yeah. Although I do think that maybe this is also a right setting for this film because there's the metaphorical idea that you're going someplace, a foreign country that's potentially difficult or different or scary, so you kind of surround yourself with the comfortable and familiar, so on some level you don't have to deal with it if you don't want to. Getting back to that theme of denial. That's interesting. Am I reading into that? Is that in your mind? You might be reading into it a little bit, but not in a way I mind. Yeah, I think I probably thought about that, maybe not quite in those terms, but in similar terms, in terms of, yeah, the safety of being enclosed in a familiar space and then what it means to break beyond that. Let's talk about performances here, Paul Mescal plays the dad and you have given him such a hard job. Because it's a character with real serious mental health issues, but the whole point of the movie is how he can keep them buried almost all the way. It's just gradually over time an accumulation of moments that you realise how he's struggling. Talk to me about calibrating that performance'cause it's gotta be exact. It was a collaboration with Paul, it was about a collaboration with Greg, the cinematographer, and with Blair, our editor, I think those things are all working together but it really all comes from Paul and we spoke a lot about a so-called diagnosis of Calum and why... Like a health diagnosis? Yeah, a tricky thing to navigate,'cause we, for ourselves, had to know what was wrong, and yet Calum doesn't know what is wrong. Oh, right. I had to be coming from a specific place to write it, even though I was trying to write it in a way that didn't succumb to cliche and there was no scene of him on the phone with a doctor being prescribed medication that would provide crystal clarity to his struggle and what was wrong and why. We had to know, but I think Paul had to then bury it, because Calum doesn't understand what's happening to him. I was thinking as I was watching the movie, this would be a different movie it's set in the '90s, it would be different today, because even kids of the daughter's age know about mental health issues and talk about it more than any other generation ever has. And it's actually something you talked about before about why this film has resonated with people. I have started to wonder recently if that is at play here, if there is a literacy about mental health among younger people and the audience does seem to be comprised of younger people. If that literacy is part of why the film has worked. Because they recognise something in it? Because they recognise it, because they have words to describe what they see unfolding on screen. Because that part of the film is legible to them because it's something they spend a lot of time thinking about. And even though it's not articulated in the film, it is expressed in the film and then they are able to articulate it after the fact. And talk about it. I know this movie is at least semi-autobiographical so moving onto Sophie, the character of the daughter, casting the part of that daughter, who on some level at least is kind of you, describe that process. Yeah, I've been pushing back lately about the autobiographical appendage because it is true that the feeling that the film builds to is very much mine, and it's true that myself and my dad were the inspiration of the characters, but they really did become characters in their own rite. Casting was an interesting point in that because you either lean in or out and my intention was to lean out because I think that is another step of separation. And I think it's important to take steps of separation, at least it was for me. I never saw this film as autobiographical, there are some film makers who do and who seek to recreate and I was never seeking to recreate other than in feeling. Did you choose the opposite, then? I tried and in fact I chose doppelgangers as likes to be pointed out to me by Barry Jenkins when he introduces the film about my abject failure in casting away, despite how hard I tried. And I think in Sophie's case that's maybe more accidental than it was in Calum's, I think in Calum it was... I just found myself drawn back to something that more closely approximated my dad, consciously or not, denial, speaking of. But with Sophie, we really met all kinds of kids and Frankie is by far and away the one who looked most like I did at that age, but that isn't why I cast her. I cast her because she's extremely special and that was evident to us upon meeting her. She had an ability that very few kids have. Was there something that she did in the moment that you were just like,- "that's it, she's cast"?- There was, yeah. It wasn't "she's cast". I tortured myself over decisions, very rarely do I make decisions that impulsively, but there was a moment, she takes pride in this, but she cried during a scene in the casting process and honestly that wouldn't normally be a sell, I'm not looking for somebody to cry, but if you met Frankie you'd know that that is the thing that feels so unexpected, she just isn't a kid who sits in feelings like that, you know? And we did an exercise where she did a role play with the casting director who played her mum and she had to choose something she wanted, I can't even remember what Frankie's was, it was probably an ice cream, knowing Frankie. And then the second exercise that we followed that up with was kind of a reversal where the kid hadn't got what they wanted and Lucy had to coax them out of their mood to come to dinner and Frankie sat there utterly still, again still in a way that is very un-Frankie, and one tear streamed down her face.- Wow.- It wasn't the tear, it was the stillness. It was the fact that she could find that. When the exercise was over, she leapt to her feet and she giddily ran out the room. It was so impressive, a little bit scary and she was just able to find that state in that moment because we asked her to. And that is really special, I remember her walking out and Lucy saying "that was the biggest surprise of the day." Charlotte Wells, writer and director of <i>Aftersun</i>, you can see Frankie Corio's beautiful performance in that movie starting January 6th when it debuts on MUBI in the UK, Latin American, India and elsewhere. Germany, Spain and other countries can stream it later this year, check the show notes for all the details. And that is our special episode of the MUBI podcast this week. There are more to come, leading up to February when we'll drop our full season three, telling the stories of great songs that were immortalized in great movies. We are talking everything from reggae to Hong Kong canto pop, follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it. While you're at it, declare your love for this show for all the world to see by leaving us a five star review. It helps others find and love us too, and if you wanna hear more from Charlotte Wells, head over to MUBI's online magazine Notebook. There's a whole different Q&A with her there that'll post on January 6th, it's in handy text form, that's at mubi.com/notebook. This episode was hosted, written and edited by me, Rico Gagliano, engineering and mastering by Stephen Colon, Yuri Suzuki composed the theme music, thanks this time to Ciara McEniff, Julia Nowicka and William Fitzpatrick. The show's executive produced by me along with Jon Barrenechea, Efe Cakarel, Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca. Thanks for listening, happy new year, now go watch some movies.