Commentary: Oscar or not, Paul Mescal makes screen acting look natural again

Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve been missing until you experience it again. I felt that way watching Paul Mescal’s performance in “Aftersun,” the stunning debut film by writer-director Charlotte Wells.

This highly personal drama, following a divorced young father and his 11-year-old daughter on summer holiday in Turkey, is elliptical in a way that tries to duplicate the staccato rhythms of memory. Wells doesn’t make it easy for an audience to find its footing. She’s stingy with plot, withholding a clear sense of the story’s destination. But her two stars, Mescal and Frankie Corio, are so natural onscreen that I found myself tuning in to the inner lives of their characters and caring about their every meandering vacation move.

This pleasurable absorption was the exception in my recent disenchanting spree of moviegoing. The cinema is having a hard time of late, and I don’t wish to add to the pile of woes. But