Aberdeen — Ryan Cooper, Eva Thomas [TIFF ’24 Review]

Aberdeen offers unfortunate proof — not that any was really needed — of how hard it is for well-intentioned films addressing important subject matter to nonetheless transcend other limitations. Child abuse, racism, homelessness, white ethnocentrism, alcoholism, queerness, the foster care system, cancer: all of these potential ills of Indigeneity are important in real life and in Aberdeen, a new drama set in and around the Peguis First Nation near Winnipeg, Manitoba, co-directed by two First Nations directors. If films were judged on nothing more than the discursive weight of their themes, it’s difficult to imagine there being many more important films to premiere this year. It’s regrettable that the film as a whole — from the skeleton of its script all the way through the performances — can’t hold a wick to directors Ryan Cooper & Eva Thomas’ evident ambition. Perhaps it’s still an important film, but it’s not particularly good.

Gail Maurice is Aberdeen, the titular woman from Peguis, and her life is a wreck. Across the film, we watch as she enters full destructive mode. Her addiction to alcohol, propensity to belligerence, and stubbornness make even her closest of friends and family distance themselves from her for their own good, and as we meet her she is in desperate need of proof of identification to begin the process of taking custody of her grandchildren. Maurice plays the role with an uneasy edge, where even the slightest inconvenience causes a theatrical eruption of emotion that often comes across as unearned. Her queer friend Alfred is played by Billy Merasty, and he’s the only person she can go to during her bad spells or troubles with the law — and even he eventually has too much of her shenanigans and pushes her away. (Though he does at least come back into her life when she truly needs a friend.) It’s a relief for reviews, too, because his presence as the stereotypical flamboyant drama queen is tough to watch in its reductive presentation. Merasty’s performance has the same quickness to arrive at its intended impact that plagues Maurice’s Aberdeen, though, which makes it far likelier that the script and not the acting talent is more fully to blame for these characters’ shortcomings.

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