An alcoholic father. A dying mother. A hardworking daughter. And their struggle to find each other and themselves. On paper, Aberdeen looks like a typical dysfunctional-family film. But unlike many films of its genre, Aberdeen is harrowingly real and disturbing, never succumbing to the Hollywood tendency to soften the story and save our stomachs some knots. Kaisa (Lena Headey), a coke-snorting businesswoman, is sent by her dying mother (Charlotte Rampling) to bring her estranged father, Tomas (Stellan Skarsg†rd) back home from Norway to Aberdeen, Scotland. At first treating her father as a worthless bum, Kaisa begins to let down her guard, and we realize that she is just as weak and vulnerable as the drunken Tomas is.
The portrayal of a father-daughter relationship can be hard to watch, but Headey and Skarsg†rd work well together on screen. Their performances are worth the price of admission. Aberdeen is not usual feel-good, Friday-night fare, but it is a relief to see a movie so grounded in reality after a long summer of frivolous and vapid Hollywood blockbusters.
