DISPATCHES PERSPECTIVE
Alternate Reality
Notes from videogaming’s borders
ADRIAN HON
My favourite movie last year was Aftersun, a beguilingly simple story set in the late ’90s about Sophie, an 11-year-old girl on holiday in Turkey with her dad. Unlike Free Guy or Ready Player One, it doesn’t instantly seem relevant towards videogames, but allow me to convince you.
When you watch Aftersun, you aren’t seeing what really happened on their holiday. The only evidence of that comes from a few short video clips recorded on a digital video camera. Everything else – which is most of the movie – comes from the now-adult Sophie struggling to reconstruct her memories of her missing father from those clips. It’s a languid drama, but I found it to be a captivating mystery, with clues and red herrings abounding within every scene and even in the timing of edits.