Tragedy by the Book
A Norwegian director's family drama is ripe with torment.

ABERDEEN
With Stellen Skarsgard, Lena Heady, Ian Hart, Charlotte Rampling
Written and directed by Hans Petter Moland

WITH ITS PAIR of disparate opening images, Hans Petter Moland’s Aberdeen announces itself as a song of innocence and experience: First we see pony-tailed Kaisa, running in slow-motion to greet her daddy Tomas as he comes home from work; then we see Kaisa all grown up, naked and bouncing heartily on top of her man du jour. Through it all Chet Baker croons a sad song that sets the tone for Moland’s melancholy road movie, which is efficiently well done, although we’ve been down this road myriad times before.

Moland thrusts us into the middle of his drama and then lards the rest of Aberdeen with seriousness, obviousness and palatable suffering. It doesn’t take long to realize that Tomas needs to grow up and Kaisa needs to rediscover her inner child. (We know she’s doing this when slow-motion kicks in.) As hard as Moland tries to give Aberdeen the sensation of lugubrious art cinema, a quicker version of this script would probably make a decent theater piece, for it’s really all about the things its characters say and shout at each other, and the big angry moments that lead to rewarding little ones.

Aberdeen opens in London, where Kaisa (Lena Headey) has just won an impressive promotion at her law firm. She celebrates by getting blasted and shagging a guy whose name she can’t remember in the morning. Then she’s awakened by a phone call: It’s her mother, Helen (Charlotte Rampling), who wants her to fetch her long-estranged alcoholic father, Tomas (Stellen Skarsgard), and take him to an experimental rehab center that he’s agreed to enter.

But Helen leaves out two details: She’s in a hospital dying of cancer, and Tomas doesn’t know a thing about the rehab. Kaisa learns the truth soon enough, and so her adventure with Tomas become a deathbed sojourn, even though Mom and Dad haven’t been together for more than 15 years (and never bothered to get married in the first place). Along the way they meet up with a buoyant truck driver (Ian Hart) who, before shagging Kaisa, warns her that it’s going to be the worse sex of her life.

Of course, Kaisa’s initial coldness toward her lazy, useless, mean-spirited father - who begins his day with a hair of the dog, and who can find fault with a sunrise - slowly thaws in the warmth of their new understanding, and from this reunion a requisite tenderness grows.

Kaisa exhibits the classic traits of an adult child of an alcoholic: She’s a control freak and all pursed up emotionally, and she quickly puts Tomas in his place by smashing his bottle of booze. ("No!" he gasps, right on cue.) So Tomas, a free spirit who gargles with the water from a lobby fountain, tries to save his little girl with boozy sagacity.

Moland, who’s better known in his native Norway, doesn’t seem to have a personal touch as a director. His movie is a generic character study - a Hallmark drama with nudity and an occasional frankness reminiscent of Sex and the City. Too much plot kicks in at the end, and when Kaisa becomes too hard on herself, her suddenly sober Daddy comes to her emotional rescue. Instead of being poignant or tart, Aberdeen has an air of gentle sadness, which can be satisfying if you care to stay with it. Redoubtably well acted, it’s ultimately about the inescapability of family, the trans-Atlantic, cross-cultural tie that binds.