Review: A memory both burning and fading in ‘Aftersun’

If one were to rank the most difficult adolescent age, 11 may not be the first but it is certainly up there. In “ Aftersun,” writer-director Charlotte Wells invites the audience to go back to that age, in memory at least, with Sophie, age 11, and her father Calum, almost age 31, on holiday at a resort in Turkey. Young fathers, especially the single sort, don’t get a lot of love from the movies and “Aftersun” is partly an ode to that very specific, very sweet bond between father and pre-teen daughter that both kind of understand will change into something else soon. “Aftersun” doesn’t play like a traditional narrative, Wells and cinematographer Gregory Oke bring you into a kind of dream state. This is a collage of emotion pieced together from photographs, a souvenir rug, shaky home videos in which someone is inevitably sulking or protesting the video, the mind, of course, and the horrible/wonderful songs of that summer, like Bran Van 3000’s “Drinking in L.A.” or the Macarena.