Writers: Ruby Caster, Clara McGregor and Vera Bulder
Director: Emma Westenberg
Yes, this film, starring Ewan McGregor and his daughter is named after the Leona Lewis song, a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic in 2007. It appears twice; father and daughter sing along exuberantly to the track when it comes on the radio as they drive to Santa Fe. And then later it plays in a strange New Mexican bar where the drama of Lewis’s voice is exchanged for an echoey karaoke sound that reflects the fraught and complex relationship between a 47-year-old father and his 20-year-old daughter. Theirs is a love that bleeds.
The McGregor characters have no names, and in the early parts of the film, we only have visual and aural clues as to who these people may be. The daughter has tattoos on her knuckles, but she’s fragile, rather than hard. She smokes and listens to screamo on her headphones. In comparison, the father looks sensible in a knitted sweater. McGregor Senior retains his Scottish accent which sounds refined next to his daughter’s American inflection.
They are awkward with each other, indicating a significant time apart. She lives with her mother in San Diego while he has a new wife and a new child. That the daughter is an addict is revealed soon; she steals miniature bottles of alcohol from a rest stop and then consumes copious amounts of sweets when she gets back in the truck, which advertises his landscape gardening business on the side. On the journey, he tells her that cocaine is smuggled into the country by stuffing it into the “arses” of animals. She’s not that concerned. Benzos appear to be her drug of choice.
They drive through the deserts of New Mexico. The father says that he’s taking her to a friend in Santa Fe where she can recover from her very recent overdose. She doesn’t want to go but finds it hard to escape. The road trip gives them a chance to get to know each other and the glances between them as secrets are spilt and grievances aired are akin to the shy looks of lovers.
Executively produced by Ewan McGregor and partly written by Clara, Bleeding Love may reek of nepotism, but the film is surprisingly good. The father-daughter pair are convincing, especially Clara who embodies the young woman still traumatised over the breakdown of her father’s marriage. With Ewan McGregor remarrying in 2022 after a messy divorce from his wife of 22 years perhaps some of Clara’s character’s resentment is real. The film mirrors the Trainspotting actor’s life in that his character has a new son of whom his daughter is jealous.
For a lot of the time director Emma Westenberg uses a handheld camera that zooms in on Clara’s face, her eyes heavy with tears that won’t come. In a shouting match between father and daughter, the camera swivels dizzyingly, but it always comes to rest on the daughter’s face, implying that it is she that we should sympathise with. Ewan McGregor’s character is weighed down by responsibility, but the distance between them means that he is the one who needs to grow up and yet, paradoxically, remember his youth.
Their dual voyage of self-discovery is an entertaining one and, occasionally, moving but they are nearly upstaged by the weird people they meet. Jake Weary, best known for the TV series Animal Kingdom, is brilliant as a redneck children’s entertainer still looking alluring in his clown trousers and red nose. Vera Bulder, also one of the writers, brings something of Jennifer Tilly or early Meg Ryan to her role as the good-hearted sex-worker who checks out an embarrassing spider bite. Her dance for the father and daughter in the middle of the road is the highlight of the movie and perhaps Westenberg could have afforded more risks like these that touch on fantasy.
She could have finished the film ten minutes earlier, too, to trust in a more ambiguous ending. A hastier departure from the cinema may also prevent hearing the real father and daughter duetting on a song that plays over the credits. Neither unnecessary ending nor toe-curling duet does Westenberg’s idiosyncratic filmmaking any justice. She should have stayed in the urban wilderness of New Mexico which is shot beautifully and achingly in 70s tones by cinematographer Chris Ripley and where Raven Aartsen’s music is a perfect fit.
Bleeding Love will be in UK Cinemas from 12 April.
