I’m going to start my examination of “Aftersun” with a word from Orson Welles. When asked in a 1960 television interview what gave him the confidence to make a movie as bold and original as “Citizen Kane,” he responded “sheer ignorance.” Welles said that not coming up through the film industry allowed him to try things in that movie that other directors wouldn’t even try — because they learned of film’s limitations before being handed the role.

Some of the most original, groundbreaking movies in cinema history have been made by first time directors. The current Richard Linklater movie “Nouvelle Vague,” which is on Netflix, details Jean-Luc Godard’s crazy methods of making the film “Breathless.” All of the Coen brothers’ themes and techniques were fully on display in their first film “Blood Simple.” Other great first films include “Ivan’s Childhood,” “Get Out,” “Badlands,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “Eraserhead,” and “12 Angry Men.”

So bear this in mind as we begin to examine “Aftersun,” because it too is a great first film. But we should not consider it a movie on training wheels because it was her first. Orson Welles never made a better movie than “Citizen Kane.” Peter Bogdanovich never topped “The Last Picture Show.” Many still consider “Badlands” to be Terrence Malick’s greatest film. It’s entirely possible that Charlotte Wells will never make a movie as good as this one. But that’s ok if true. She’d be in excellent company.

There’s an important way that Scottish native Charlotte Wells is not like most of these other first timers — she’s quite a bit older than most of them. Wells is now 38 years old, she was 35 when “Aftersun” was released. Before then, she received a Bachelor’s degree in Classics from Kings College, then a Master of Arts from Oxford. She began her career in finance and after helping a friend run a post-production company, she applied to NYU for a dual Master of Fine Arts and Business Administration, hoping to become a producer.

So as you can see, she took the exact opposite route of Orson Welles. Charlotte Wells obtained a deep knowledge of the movie business before she began in film production and then started to make some short films. I doubt that many film directors have been as extensively educated as Charlotte Wells. She was a fellow at the 2020 Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Labs when she began work on “Aftersun.”

You can sense her deep knowledge of film history right from the opening credits of “Aftersun.” One common feature of contemporary independent films is that they have a very long list of film contributors and producers even before we get to the proper credits. Wells takes advantage of this lead up by giving us an interesting sound artifact to introduce us to her subject.

It’s a sound very much tied to the 1990s — the whirring of a cassette-based film camera of that era. It’s the sound of a cassette being loaded into the camera and it’s something we no longer hear today when all video is captured digitally on solid state memory. This places the movie in the 1990s before we see the first image, and that’s important, because “Aftersun” will never directly reveal the time that it takes place.

Little hints like this will be revealed to us throughout the movie to orient us to what is happening. “Aftersun” is a movie that demands our attention, because on the surface, very little is happening.

The first image we see in “Aftersun” is a grainy, shaken image of a man, Calum, next to a sliding glass door and the voice of a girl, Sophie, asking “what is that?” We then see that the man, Sophie’s father, is dancing, somewhat, and says “these are my moves.” Sophie is embarrassed by his dance stylings. She then tells her dad that she wants to interview him. She notes that she just turned 11 and he’s about to turn 131 (actually 31), so she asks in her adorable Scottish accent “when you were 11, what did you think you would be doing now?”

The movie cuts away at this point, but we will return to this scene later. The technique Wells is using here is a flash forward, something Kieslowski loved and used often, especially in the early moments of his movies. Kieslowski believed that it was valuable to put scenes into the memories of viewers even before they understood their context, so when the images later played out, they would be underlined, we would subliminally understand their importance.

Wells crams lots of these flash forwards into the opening moments of “Aftersun.” Right after the 90s era video camera turns off, we get a quick pixelated collage of blurred images. This is followed by a scene that repeats several times in the film, an image of a grown up Sophie at a rave, staring straight ahead as a strobe light takes her in and out of light.

There are many possible interpretations of these rave images that sometimes include Calum as well. One that seems plausible to me is that Sophie was under the influence at this rave and both the mirage of seeing her father and the flood of memories about the events of the movie came to her during a hallucination. “Aftersun” invites these kinds of speculative theories because it provides so few direct answers.

The soundscape during the rave scene is interesting as well — it begins with some rather mellow spacey music, not the kind of thing you’d typically hear at a rave, and then the sound of a crying child is mixed in. Something more to interpret if we wish.

Next, we go back to the image pixelation, except this time it’s an actual collage of images in the movie that lands on the closing scene of the movie, where Sophie waves goodbye from the airport and Calum says “I love you.” Then it’s back to the rave scenes and a flood of more images from the vacation that we’re about to experience, closing again on Sophie’s face with her eyes closed.

All of this serves as an overture for the movie, a brief glimpse of what we’re going to a see and a hint at the framing of the experience — the movie seems to be coming out of the memories of this older woman while she is at a rave.

But now we are in a tour bus and we are properly introduced to Sophie and Calum. We hear for the first time that the movie is set in Turkey, but we never find out what city — most of the action is at a hotel that could be anywhere. The father and daughter bond by making fun of the tour guide.

The bus scene goes on for a couple minutes. The landscape is dark and not memorable. We see Sophie asleep for part of it — we don’t see Calum, except for a very brief image of a right arm in a casts. Yes, as the film begins, Calum has a cast on his right arm. It’s never explained why.

They arrive at the hotel. No one is there, Calum rings the front desk bell, no one answers. He goes upstairs to try to find someone, stops halfway up and starts to come down again, Sophie sees him as says “dad, I’m ok,” and he turns around and goes back up again.

Sophie thumbs through a book while he father is upstairs. I can’t see what the book is, but perhaps more eagle eyed viewers have noticed it. Wells likes to drop literary references throughout the film, so it’s worthwhile to keep an eye out for books in each frame.

When he gets back to the lobby, Calum says “someone’s coming,” then asks if Sophie is ready for bed. She responds no, but the film then cuts to her crashed out on a bed. It so happens that the reservation was screwed up and they were given a room with only one small bed. Calum calls back down to the manager, notes the error, then seems to accept their offer of a cot.

Calum then roots around in his bag, pulls out cigarettes, then opens the sliding glass door to the porch. He struggles to light a match with his right hand in a cast. While smoking, Calum seems to be very edgy, moving around uncomfortably, then he does some nervous swaying to calm himself. It seems clear from this little moment on the porch that Calum was masking quite a bit of mental discomfort during the day with Sophie and he’s letting it all out now.

Paul Mescal, who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for this performance, bears a resemblance to my own father, and there’s something about the way he carries himself physically that reminds me of my dad quite a bit. But the character Calum really isn’t like my dad at all, even if the story of a lost parental relationship does hit close to home for me.

I’ll pick up the next scene with Calum asleep on the bed, with Sophie waking up on the cot.