ABERDEEN
Reviewed by Harvey Karten First Run Features/ Norsk Film AS Director: Hans Petter Moland Writer: Kristin Amundsen, Hans Petter Moland Cast: Stellan Skarsgard, Lena Headey, Ian Hart, Charlotte Rampling
Truck drivers pick up people however weird-looking because they presumably know what it's like to be stranded on a desolate highway, front tire blown out. Of course they're looking for some conversation as well on their lonely treks across great expanses of road. Some time after a driver named Clive (Ian Hart--who for my money looks a lot like a Donald O'Connor from "Singin' in the Rain") gives a lift to an older man with a young woman on a European highway, he concludes that they are "strange but nice." That's about best way to describe the father-daughter combination of Tomas (Stellan Skarsgard) and Kaisa (Lena Headey) in "Aberdeen," Hans Petter Moland's road movie that combines a delayed coming of age drama with the possibility of family redemption. Often theatrical as though to show off the considerable talent of its essentially four-person cast, "Aberdeen" will remind moviegoers of Mike Figgis's "Leaving Las Vegas" with fragments of such drug-or-drink related films as "Trainspotting" (because of the Scottish influence), "Requiem for a Dream," and even the great classic with Welsh-born Ray Milland, Billy Wilder's unrelenting story of alcoholism, "The Lost Weekend." If "Aberdeen" breaks no new ground--unlike the film that introduced Mr. Skarsgard to a world audience, "Breaking the Waves"--there's some mighty powerful acting at work here. Sparks fly.
When we see a flashback of Kaisa's relationship with her dad when she was about ten years old, jumping into his arms as he arrives home from work in their rural Scottish town, we can understand how she had the motivation to become a lawyer. What is not clear at first, given the disposition of psychologists to say that a woman's relationship with men is dependent on her connection with her dad, is why she seems to prefer sex with a bevy of men whose names she cannot remember to a steady alliance with a good guy. But that insight comes soon enough, when her mother (Charlotte Rampling), now dying of cancer in Aberdeen's St. Ruth's Infirmary, asks her London-based daughter to pick up Tomas from his workplace on a rig on Norway (shades of "Breaking the Waves"!). What she finds is an out-of-work man broken down by alcoholism and, in a role reversal more commonly found when aging parents are afflicted with ailments like Alzheimer's, the child becomes mother to the man.
Director Moland ("Zero Kelvin," "The Last Lieutenant") takes us on a ride from London to Norway to Scotland which inevitably means trouble for the booze-addicted dad and her cocaine-snorting daughter. One blown tire and the odd couple sign on to a truck ride with Clive who is surprisingly adept at straightening them out and who himself is plunged into an adventure he never could have imagined.
"Aberdeen" recalls elements in the relationship between characters played by Nicolas Cage and Elizabeth Shue in another downer, "Leaving Las Vegas," though Ms. Headey's character is a lot freer with her language and Mr. Skarsgard not quite ready to do himself in like the unhappy fellow who makes what he considers his final trip to Nevada. As we soak in Philip Ogaard's lensing of some less-than-touristic areas of Scotland and Norway, we see the three folks in a truck act out a great drama in their lives, with Lena Headey giving Stellan Skarsgard more than suitable histrionics as a successful lawyer who resorts to various antics including physical violence against a group of muggers. She looks darn good even when cut, bruised and bandaged while Skarsgard is terrific, speaking fluent English with a thoroughly American accent.
Not Rated. Running time: 106 minutes. (C)2001, Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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