Why “The Sun is Mine” is praised by critics around the world

One paragraph

“The Sun is Mine” by Charlotte Wells is an immersion of the viewer into the diary of the director’s memories of his childhood. Using the feature film method, she reproduces the chronicle of an inconspicuous vacation with her father in order to understand herself and the person with whom she can no longer talk. Wells draws a modern male portrait, the hero of actor Paul Mescal is so fragile that he can crumble due to a loud cry or a harsh word. This is how Wells remembered him, and this is how her alter ego became in the film, which is reviewing old videos with her father, who lives only on the film of an amateur camera.

in detail

Calum (Paul Mescal) is vacationing with her young daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) in a Turkish resort. He did not think that he would live to be thirty, and he does not hope to meet his fortieth birthday. Apparently, the divorce was especially painful for him, because he spends his birthday alone with the child. He wants to remember these days with his daughter forever and records their vacation on a video camera. Many years later, his adult daughter will review his records.

The debut of Charlotte Wells “My Sunshine” is one of the best films of the last year, awarded with many prizes and hit the tops of the most prestigious publications. This success can be called unexpected, despite the fact that the project is backed by the A24 studio (their hit “Everything Everywhere and At Once” won the Oscar) and the main online cinema of the festival film MUBI. Wells’ film premiered in Cannes Film Festival’s Critic’s Week 3rd Competition, with many contestants fading into the darkness of time. Therefore, it is joyful that the big players noticed the autobiographical drama of the Scottish woman.

In 2010, Sofia Coppola won the Venice Film Festival with Somewhere, a drama similar to Welles’ work: actor father Johnny (Stephen Dorff) finds meaning in his life after spending a few days with his daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning). Coppola visualizes the staleness of the protagonist’s feelings in two ways: for almost the entire film, Johnny’s hand is encased in plaster; in one spectacular scene, his head is covered with clay to make the make-up as comfortable as possible. Once a clumsy, now frozen mass, both Coppola and Wells use this image to show the experiences of their characters. Both directors made films about the total loneliness of man – only Wells also explores the nature of memories and the timeless connection between parents and children.

As with Coppola’s painting, Wells avoids big events because life isn’t made up of them. There are no dramatic situations in “My Sun” either: the director focuses on dialogues and the acting of actors, who sometimes need to convey the whole range of complex feelings without a single word. So in the central scene, Calum and Sophie come to the carpet store, where they would like to buy one product for memory – only the carpet they like costs 850 pounds. The heroes of intellectual film directors rarely face financial problems because, like Sofia Coppola, they often belong to the upper, privileged class who don’t have to worry about apartment bills. They live at the top of the pyramid and are far from worldly hardships.

Wells’ characters do not live in a vacuum, because at a young age Sophie learns the realities of financial inequality: at the hotel she meets a group of teenagers who are happy owners of an all-inclusive bracelet that her father cannot afford. It upsets her a little, but no more, it is more important for Sophie to spend time with Calum, as if crumbling before her eyes. She understands everything on a hunch, so she does not ask her father any questions when she returns late to the hotel room and finds him naked on the bed. She just carefully covers him with a blanket and goes out onto the balcony, where a couple of days ago he stood on the railing and opened his arms towards the sunset sky.

Although Sophie is only eleven years old, she knows about Calum’s psychological problems because she feels the symptoms of depression. One day, the girl describes a feeling that he understands: as if she is in a pool and the water column presses on her. “My Sunshine” is the pool of memories in which Charlotte Wells lives to this day, offering the viewer to watch a dramatization of the most precious moments of her life. Fictional, captured by modern equipment, and real, filmed by her father, still alive and hiding behind an amateur camera.