Chantal Akerman: the Belgian director who inspired the devastating end to ‘Aftersun’
There were several admirable features of Charlotte Wells’ glorious film Aftersun. Amongst them, the awe-inspiring and tender performances of both Frankie Corio (in her first acting role) and Paul Mescal, the excellently intelligent cinematography, and the screenplay that tore at the audience’s heartstrings long after the final cut to black.
Perhaps the most devasting moment in Aftersun came right at its close, though, and serves as one of the most moving endings to a film in recent memory. Mild Spoiler Ahead. It sees Calum – Mescal’s father to Corio’s Sophie – filming their return home on a handheld camcorder before he walks down the airport corridor to join an eternal rave in Sophie’s memory.
When Wells visited the Criterion Collection cupboard, she already knew that she would pick out the Chantal Akerman DVD series entitled Eclipse Series 19: Chantal Akerman in the Seventies. “When I was invited to come in here, this was the first thing I knew I wanted to grab,” she said. “Every single film in here means a great deal to me, and I’m so excited to finally own it”.
Discussing in more detail the film collection, Wells admitted that Akerman’s La Chambre inspired the final scene of Aftersun. She said: “La Chambre is a short that she made in New York in 1972; it was the inspiration for the last shot of my film, which is kind of a 360-degree pan.”
Interestingly, La Chambre was not the only Akerman film that had its influence on a scene in Aftersun. Wells added: “There is [also] a tracking shot in down a hotel corridor that is very directly inspired by Hotel Monterey”. So it’s evident that Wells has great admiration for Akerman and used several of her works to inform her brilliant recent feature, including News from Home, which according to Wells, “was definitely on my mind while I was making [Aftersun].”
Wells’ love for Akerman is so strong that she also detailed an amusing anecdote about her longing to buy an elusive original poster on eBay of News From Home. She said: “There was an original poster on eBay for $350, and it was beautiful, and it sat there for six months, and one day, I decided, ‘This is it; I am feeling egregiously irresponsible enough to purchase this poster’.”
“I went online, and it was gone, and I was chatting to a friend who told that exact story, but from her point of view,” she added. “I wish one of us owned the poster, but instead, we’re both equally devastated that neither of us owns the News From Home poster, which is this gorgeous grainy image of New York.”
