“Tender is the Ghost”: (In)visible, Reciprocal Breath, and the Realm of Memory in Aftersun
Sean Sabye
Calum (Paul Mescal) and Sophie (Frankie Corio) embrace in a window’s reflection in Aftersun.
In The Place of Breath in Cinema, Davina Quinlivan reminds her reader of the relatively self-evident idea that human breath is “neither completely visible, nor invisible …” (3). Temperatures below 45 degrees Fahrenheit transform our breath into a discernable steam, projecting out of the nose or cascading from the mouth. When we submerge ourselves in water, our breath instinctively bubbles to the surface in reflective, undulating orbs that dissipate upon impact with the surface above. Drugs and tobacco, when inhaled, replace our breath with a thick smoke that perceptibly escapes us, silently taking with it a bit of our lives. Outside of these and other singular scenarios, breath’s physical, invisible existence can still be registered through sound, touch, smell, and maybe taste. Given that film is primarily an audio-visual medium, sound is the one of these four non-visual senses most often mobilized by filmmakers when emphasizing the place of breath within the cinematic experience. Charlotte Wells explores both the visible and audible manifestations of breath on screen in her 2022 directorial debut Aftersun, a film that regularly and intently reaches beyond its narrative to engage the spectator on an affective level with its attention to the textural and visceral sensations of the image. This aspect of Aftersun makes it a generative starting point when thinking about the function of breath from a phenomenological perspective, specifically how breath can be used to express the alive quality of “film’s material body,” as Vivan Sobchack terms it, and its perceptive and expressive relationship with the spectator (207). Aftersun tells of the vacation taken by a young father named Calum (Paul Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) to a Turkish holiday resort. Punctuated by vignettes from the life of an older version of Sophie reflecting on home videos from the trip, Aftersun is presented as a reflection on childhood memories and the inheritances from our parents we all must eventually confront. While Aftersun provides examples of the two latter visible breaths discussed above, the film’s attention to the rhythmic and meditative quality of audible breath attunes the spectator to a hidden reality beneath the surface of the film image that complicates the visual representations of Calum in Sophie’s memory. Aftersun’s foregrounding of audible breath asks us to contemplate the nature of our fluid, reciprocal relationship with the film body and how breath obscures the lines between the visible and invisible realms of the diegesis. Before analyzing specific examples of ‘reciprocal breath,’ and its effects in Aftersun, I must first address the theoretical base upon which my notion of breath’s phenomenological function is built, specifically the writing of Vivian Sobchack, Davina Quinlivan, and Robert Spadoni.
In The Address of the Eye, Vivian Sobchack critiques the dominant formalist and realist schools of film theory and their disregard for the “embodied” experiences cinema provides by highlighting film’s phenomenological relationship with the spectator, based on the idea of film as a living (breathing) entity that perceives and expresses (4). Sobchack emphasizes the “reversibility” of these two actions for both the spectator and the film, meaning that at any given moment either party may be perceiving an act of expression or expressing an act of perception in the other (18-19). The give and take of sensation that takes place between spectator and film forms the backbone of this analysis. Cinema “uses modes of embodied existence,” such as “seeing, hearing,” and “physical and reflective movement,” as the “substance of its language,” or its method of interacting with the spectator (4-5). Sobchack understands the film body’s breath as manifested visually in the “regular but intermittent passage of images into and out of the film’s material body” (207). This is a key juncture at which my understanding of the film body’s breath diverges from Sobchack’s. I will be considering breath as expressed through the audible mode of embodied existence, traded between spectator and film in an invisible exchange of life. Quinlivan explains how Sobchack’s understanding of film breath as a “form of embodied sight” is “undeniably part of the visual regime,” and therefore must be expanded on in order to fully grasp the phenomenological significance of breath as an audible expression of the film body’s actuality (19).
As was alluded to earlier on, Davina Quinlivan’s The Place of Breath in Cinema explores how film breath exaggerates the obscured boundaries between the realms of visibility and invisibility by bringing the theories of Sobchack, Luce Irigaray and Laura U. Marks into conversation with one another (2). Quinlivan proposes the concepts of the “(in)visible dimension of the human body,” which calls attention to the unclassifiable nature of breath’s visibility, and the “(im)material,” referring to a “mode of duality between the material and the incorporeal that breathing specifically suggests” (3). When film accentuates audible breath, it brings us closer to the subjectivity of the film body and the inner reality that lies beneath the film’s visible dimension (6). This (im)material mode elaborates on the modes of embodied existence outlined by Sobchack, carving out a realm between what we see and what we hear. Although Aftersun uses sound to attune the spectator to the (im)material, it also asks us to contemplate how the mode is rendered visually and what it says about the nature of the filmed reality. In order to understand Aftersun’s method of attuning the spectator to the (im)material mode, we must look to Robert Spadoni’s analogic description of the enveloping effects of film atmosphere as film breath (61).
Spadoni’s “What is Film Atmosphere?” delineates film’s ever-present, tactile atmosphere as more expansive than its “environmental character” (or its “settings, sounds, and depictions of weather”) (48). Defining atmosphere’s extension into the space of the spectator, Spadoni uses breath as a metaphor for atmosphere, strengthening the phenomenological relationship between the breathing film and the breathing spectator. He explains how “films and their audiences breathe each other,” a reciprocal process that exceeds the boundaries of the screen membrane (61). Furthermore, he sees all formal attributes that compose the film image, “soundtracks, cameras, and settings,” as breathing components of the film body (60). Aftersun keenly mobilizes Spadoni’s notion of the phenomenological exchange of breath to attune the spectator to the rhythm of its own audible breath. This process of attunement heightens the spectator’s awareness of the (im)material mode, drawing us into greater alignment with the inner, below-the-surface meanings and emotions of the film body. Aftersun’s most direct examples of breath attunement, or reciprocal breath, occur during scenes of Calum doing tai chi, a martial art known to enhance the practice of Buddhist meditation.
The first time the camera focuses its attention solely on Calum’s tai chi, the film’s framing obscures Calum’s image, forcing the spectator to perceive the action almost exclusively through the sound of Calum’s breath. He stands off screen, just to the right of the frame, and is only visible through the mediation of a hotel room mirror. Occasionally, Calum’s hands and arms push into the frame, but they are cut off from his identifying features. Most of the frame is occupied by the negative space of two white walls and a cheap standing fan that automatically tilts from left to right at a hypnotic pace. Calum’s fracturing into multiple planes of the image, combined with the foregrounded sound of breath, initially assigns greater significance to what we hear rather than what we see. As the spectator gradually perceives the rhythm of Calum’s breath, the urge to share in the expression of the film body intrudes the psyche. The film body invites us, through the conduit of Calum, to breathe with its rhythm, to take part in Calum’s practice. When we accept this invitation, we take part in a mutual act of perception and expression related to Sobchack’s notion of direct interaction with the film body (3). Additionally, our engagement with the (im)material mode through the process of reciprocal breath awakens us to visual components of the shot that reenact the phenomenological encounter between spectator and film. The mechanical breath of the fan constitutes the artificial breath of the film apparatus within the diegesis, engaging in an exchange of air with the human subject, standing in for the film spectator. This revelatory capacity of the (im)material mode, generating visual meaning by invisible means, hopefully detracts from any adherence to anthropocentrism that my prioritization of human action within the frame may have suggested.
Calum performs tai chi in his hotel room in Aftersun.
The second scene that concentrates on the practice of tai chi is even more direct than the first in the way it encourages the spectator to adopt the rhythm of the film body’s breath. Upon arriving at a daytrip destination away from their resort, Calum and Sophie, framed in a long shot, walk to the edge of a cliff as the camera slowly pans to look out at the green mountain range that sprawls in the distance. Sophie mimics Calum’s every move as he acts like a soldier standing at attention. After Calum gradually assumes the tai chi starting position, Sophie realizes that he has tricked her into meditating with him. The camera continues to pan at a snail’s pace, revealing more details of an eroded informational sign with the words “We know the perfect place …” legible. Sophie plays into Calum’s charade, imitating the unhurried wave-like motions of her father’s arms as best she can. The inhale and exhale of Calum and Sophie’s shared breath rises up out of the hum of insects buzzing and floats on the most detectable surface of the scene’s soundscape. Calum eventually reminds Sophie to “breathe” and “focus on your breathing.” These commands, like the breath of the film body, extend beyond the partition of the cinema screen, guiding the spectator’s breath. Once again, the synchronized breath of the film and the spectator invokes the (im)material mode, uncovering “the ways in which the diegesis represents embodied consciousness on screen,” according to Quinlivan (31). The decay of the informational sign, with its rotted tears in the image of clear blue ocean water, manifests the deterioration of the visible realm in the presence of the (in)visible. The receding mountains become hazier and hazier the deeper our eyes move into the frame, clouded by a thick fog. The more we participate in the (im)material mode, the more the (in)visible leaks into the realm of the visible. As will be discussed later, these visual indications of the (in)visible tell us something about the nature of the onscreen reality and how it differs from the world we exist in as spectators.
Calum and Sophie practice tai chi on a mountaintop in Aftersun
Aftersun’s interest in the embodied affect of a united film/spectator breath can also be registered in two parallel scenes of sleep. Calum and Sophie arrive at the resort in the middle of the night and are given the wrong hotel room, but Sophie quickly falls asleep in her street clothes. At bed level, the camera steadily makes its way up Sophie’s sleeping body while we hear a sound bridge from a previous shot of Calum on the phone trying to correct the hotel’s mistake. After Calum removes Sophie’s shoes, tucks her in with a blanket and turns out the light, Sophie turns toward the camera as it simultaneously tracks and pans to frame the sliding glass door of the hotel room balcony over her torso. Once Calum steps out onto the balcony and slides the door back into place, Sophie’s breath jumps to a discernibly higher volume. Shortly thereafter, the camera racks focus on Calum, who is struggling to light a cigarette with his dominant arm in a cast, then ploddingly zooms in on his back. Calum smokes his cigarette and sways to an imperceptible rhythm that juxtaposes the consistent cadence of Sophie’s breathing. The placement of this scene (only 8 minutes into the film) combined with its unwavering concentration on the duration (over 2 minutes of breathing) and rhythm of Sophie’s breath makes it into a primer of sorts, instructing the spectator on the important role breath attunement plays in the process of tapping into the (im)material mode. This scene also provides an example of inaudible visible breath layered on top of audible (in)visible breath. Both the visible and (in)visible exaggerate the presence of one another as they blend into one single act of breath, simulating the shared breath of the film and spectator. This similarity between narrative action and phenomenological perception/expression is made apparent when the spectator meets the film’s breath on its own terms. Breath forms a connection between the two onscreen characters across the boundary of the glass door, a rendering of the separating partition that is the film screen, just as it links the spectator to the internal reality of the film body. The constructed barrier that separates father and daughter entirely dissipates when the camera racks focus back to Sophie and tilts down to her level. Sophie’s final breath in the scene is split with Calum as the film cuts from night to day and supplants Sophie’s image with that of Calum exhaling in her place.
Calum smokes a cigarette on the hotel balcony while Sophie sleeps in Aftersun.
The latter occurrence of this scenario flips the roles of the two characters, with the nonsimultaneous sound of Calum’s breath building to an intensity that seemingly shatters the visible realm as we know it. Following a sequence that culminates with Calum walking into the ocean, further hinting at the character’s undefined struggle with his own mental health, Sophie is let back into the hotel room by an attendant to find her father sprawled out on their shared bed. The camera follows Sophie as she crosses to the bed, covers her father’s nakedness with a sheet, and exits out the sliding glass door. Unlike the previous scene, the camera does not rack focus on Sophie, and Calum’s breathing does not move to the forefront of perception. Instead, the camera progressively sinks below the surface of the bed, eventually cutting to the scene of a rave that is regularly interspersed throughout the film’s main narrative. Strobe lights limit the visual perceptibility of the rave, but both Calum and a woman we assume to be adult Sophie are consistently detectable among the crowd of dancing bodies. The dull roar of a cityscape clashes with the sounds of heavy breathing and ocean waves while a euphoric Calum flashes in and out of visibility. While previously analyzed moments of amplified breathing have indicated a decay of visible reality, this is the first time breath is directly bracketed by a reality outside of the one that young Sophie and Calum exist within. Calum’s preserved youth in the rave, combined with the knowledge of his mental health troubles, suggests that he may no longer exist outside the confines of Sophie’s memory. If we are to understand the (im)material mode as a means of perceiving/expressing something about the film body that exists below the surface of what we see, the rave itself may come to represent this middle ground between the visible and the (in)visible, between memory and reality. Breath’s unique (in)visibility leads us into this space in which adult Sophie can interact with the memory of her father in a way that exceeds the visible (mini-dv tapes) and grasps at the tangible. The elusiveness and instability of this limbo is demonstrated by a cut to adult Sophie waking up from a dream. Calum’s gasps, possibly borrowed from his unseen escape from death by drowning, disrupt the mirage of Sophie’s recollection in the same way that foregrounded film breath disrupts the idea of a singular film reality.
There are other moments in Aftersun that visually hint at Calum’s confinement within the (im)material realm, described by Quinlivan as “a space which conjoins the living and the dead, the visible and the absent” (51). Breath itself is not necessarily a prominent element of these scenes; however, Wells’ use of reflective mise-en-scène imbues Calum’s likeness with the (in)visible qualities of breath. When Calum holds Sophie and rocks to the distant sound of Blur’s “Tender,” the characters’ embrace is shown in the reflection of the hotel room’s sliding glass door. Not only is Calum’s face withheld from view, but his figure is also outlined with a translucent aura that merges with the darkness of night. Calum speaks of Scotland, Sophie’s home, as a land that’s “in the past” for him. The mise-en-scène molds him into a specter, an apparition that can only be interacted with in the in-between. Toward the end of this same sequence, there is a shot of Calum’s face, upside down and reflected in a glass-covered table where the father-daughter pair eat breakfast together. The texture of the table’s wood grain remains distinct despite the glass’s superimposition of Calum’s image. His person is in a perpetual state of disintegration, phasing in and out of being and vanishing, like breath. The spectator’s identification of Calum’s ghostly status is aided by a heightened awareness of the breath that pervades the entirety of Aftersun and maintains the reciprocal, embodied relationship between spectator and film body.
Calum’s face is rendered translucent by a glass tabletop in Aftersun.
Aftersun’s use of diegetic, audible breath asks the spectator to consider the film as an expression of an (im)material realm that lies beneath visible reality by attuning the spectator’s breath to the rhythm of the material film body’s breath. Scenes that foreground the sound of breath compel the spectator to feel the film body through Quinlivan’s (im)material mode, an elaboration of the “modes of embodied existence” outlined by Sobchack, revealing the images’ demonstration of (in)visibility and the embodied emotional meanings they contain (4-5). Aftersun is but one example of contemporary film that combines an interest in the (in)visible with an attention to the implications of breath in cinema. Lee Chang-dong’s 2018 film Burning, with its uses of pantomime, appeals to metaphor, and spotlighting of both visible and invisible breath (specifically in its final scene), immediately comes to mind as another fertile ground upon which this theory can be tested. When we come to understand film as a living thing, we multiply our means of relating to works outside the limitations of narrative. The spectatorial experience becomes less about relating to the people we see on screen and more about how our relationship with the film itself can contribute to our understanding of the below-surface sensations that subtly guide us through its world. It’s all about meeting the film on its own terms and being unafraid to comingle with its being in the space between one’s seat and the screen. Breath, an utterance of the soul, communicates the intangible essence of a film in a way that escapes conventional ideas of perception.
Works Cited
Quinlivan, Davina. The Place of Breath in Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.
Sobchack, Vivian. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Spadoni, Robert. “What Is Film Atmosphere?” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 37, no. 1, January 2, 2020, pp. 48–75.