“ABERDEEN”: More Netflixness. More scattered thoughts:

1. The plot: A hard-charging young lawyeress (Latin name: Barracuda) gets a phone call from her dying mother, begging her to fetch her estranged alcoholic father from Norway to Aberdeen for a final reunion. Now that you know the plot, you can probably write the script yourself and be just as original, or not, as the filmmakers.

2. Europeans need to learn that censorship can sometimes substitute for artistic judgment. Or to put it another way, just because you can show full male frontal nudity and female partial nudity doesn’t mean it would actually enhance the storytelling. The nudity not only did not help; it actively detracted, as I found myself wondering why Scottish women apparently felt no need to wear bras. Stupid, stupid movie!

3. This movie also serves as an object lesson in Reasons to Avoid Cliche: Cliches make you say things you probably don’t mean. I spent a good portion of the movie wondering whether this would be a flick where the ambitious woman was punished for her desires. Ultimately I think that’s not true (the daughter and her father are mirrored, and it’s hard to say who reaps more punishment and who deserves what, which is how fiction should work), but anyone who wanted to read “Aberdeen” that way would find ample evidence. That’s because the scriptwriter relied on dumb grasping-lawyeress cliches. This is a minor spoiler: The daughter’s career situation never gets resolved. That suggests to me that the scriptwriter simply didn’t realize that he was setting her up for a standard punished-feminine-ambition plotline. But he bought into it anyway, by buying into the cliche that if you want to depict a woman unable to expose herself to Love, you should a) give her a lucrative career and b) show us her breasts. I don’t think the film is trying to making a misogynist point, even subconsciously. But the cliches push it into that corner because those cliches spring from a misogynist culture, and a smarter writer would have avoided this trap.

4. Nonetheless. “Aberdeen” is a moving father-daughter film starring Lena Headey. Since Headey is a terrific actress, it’s a good movie. Stellan Skarsgaard is also good as her father. And I am a complete sucker for father-daughter films. And the music is wonderful. Basically, I can’t recommend this movie. But if you want father-daughterness and you do not mind a degree of cliche, this is worth your time. I was won over, then annoyed, then won over, then annoyed again. Overall, I’m glad I saw it, but mostly because now I know Lena Headey is amazing.