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I see why they are necessary but the details that come up on the BBFC classification card at the start of films in the UK can sometimes affect your viewing experience. They always have to say if a movie has anything to do with suicide which can be a real spoiler but sometimes the warnings can just put you on edge for some non-specific thing you know is coming at some point. The line on this one that I wish I’d rather not seen is ‘and some upsetting scenes’.

Now you might think that I have just done the very same thing to you as this title card did to me but what I am saying to you is that you shouldn’t pay it any heed. I viewed almost the whole of this movie in a state of nervousness that something awful was going to happen and I didn’t have to. There I was watching a young father on holiday with his eleven year old daughter and I was convinced that at any minute some huge tragedy was going to strike and as a result I did not enjoy the film as much as I probably could have. To be fair if I’d paid attention to the larger detail on that card, that the movie is only rated a 12A, I might not have worried so much but I was nonetheless I was inappropriately tense the entire time.

As it is though this film from debut director Charlotte Wells is a lot smarter than that. It does play with the audiences expectations around there being some kind of impending disaster to some extent, there are some fake outs, but mostly it just shows you what plays out during this couple’s largely uneventful trip to Turkey. It is actually quite touching to see the two of them connect and spend precious time together and any incidents that do occur toward the end of this story pass without major consequences.

Then it all changes. Not with a big ‘upsetting scene’ though but with a subtle denouement that tells you just enough and absolutely no more to reframe every single moment you have seen before. There are hints as to this short closing act throughout but it is only at the end that you realise what you have truly been watching. It is sad but not with anything as typical as a laboured gut punch revelation, rather it is as if one word has been uttered to alter your perception, only the clues are visual not verbal.

This is the work of a very skilled storyteller and very filmic sensibility and it is quite brilliant. The title of the movie not only refers to the cream you seen the man and his little girl rubbing on each others faces at the end of each sunbaked day but to the whole idea of what you have in your armoury when something that was lovely at the time starts to feel very sore later.

As well as Wells’ masterful handling of her narrative, the success of this hangs totally on the two central actors. Paul Mescal from BBC’s Normal People is very good but the real star is undoubtedly twelve year old Frankie Corio. In my last review I raved about Alisha Weir in Matilda the Musical and now here is someone of the same age giving an equally capable performance but in a very different timbre. Corio is so incredibly naturalistic that you totally buy into her simple story and feel the weight of the ending all the more.

So I may have given something away by telling you that what I thought was a spoiler was not a spoiler but I’ve tried to avoid giving you much more than that. Aftersun is best seen with minimal knowledge of the plot but it should be seen so that you can discover for yourself the power of the film making at play. Forget ‘upsetting’ and think ‘rewarding’.