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ABERDEEN (Yellow; if you go, stay to the finish)
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The fashion in modern independent-film storytelling, built on the rock of Altman, is never to explain. Instead the audience must be on the edge of their chairs, straining to hear muttered dialog for who's-done-what-to-whom clues among characters all of whom know one another well. But comprehension deferred can be enjoyment denied — though you may understand the movie walking home, while watching it you are alternately bored and frustrated.
In service to your viewing pleasure of ABERDEEN, let me thus violate the movie-reviewer's license and tell you a key fact: for the last fifteen years, drunken Norwegian oil-rigger (Stellen Skarsgard, after BREAKING THE WAVES, who you gonna call?) has borne like a wolf in his vitals a secret belief that angry spitfire Kaisa (Lena Headey, burning up the screen) is in fact not his daughter. So when Kaisa arrives, wound tight with impatience and credit-card haste, he is by turns sullen, inert, and belligerent. But Helen (Charlotte Rampling, showing the obverse of her UNDER THE SAND wistful grief) is in fact dying of Movie Disease -- no pain, no external symptoms, no loss of lucidity, and a prognosis of hanging on until ten minutes from the movie's end. So booze-puking father and coke-snorting daughter set off through a cinematically chilly landscape that forces them to take the roundabout route back to dying forgiving Mom.
The plot makes no sense. The road-journey fiascoes make no sense. The on-road plot contrivances are painfully clumsy. All this is mere papier-mache staging for the actors and their characters.
The performances partially redeem. Skarsgard is utterly persuasive as a drunk (those of you who thought you'd seen enough of his corpus in BREAKING THE WAVES, just wait). Combustible Lena Headey (a small role in REMAINS OF THE DAY) is mesmerizing as a Tasmanian devil with a bad hair day. Big-eared weak-chinned Ian Hart gives a sweet likability to an absurd role, tender Yorkshire truck driver Clive who not only beds Kaisa cute, he gives her a cute tender orgasm. And Rampling played a structurally similar role - - disaffected but wise forgiving ex-wife - - opposite Skarsgard in the similarly opaque and slow-paced SIGNS AND WONDERS.
At its end, the movie gives us two memorable father-daughter moments and ends with a vignette of hopeful reconciliation that warms us as we come in out of their fifteen-year emotional cold. It may not have been enough to redeem the film, but we appreciate it nonetheless.