Bleeding Love
February 15th, 2024
MOVIE: BLEEDING LOVE
STARRING: CLARA MCGREGOR, EWAN MCGREGOR, JAKE WEARY, VERA BULDER
DIRECTED BY: EMMA WESTENBERG
AMovieGuy.com’s RATING: 2 STARS (Out of 4)
The conversation of the “nepo-baby” is everywhere. I don’t think film critics are against it as much as you can’t watch movies these days without someone being related to another Hollywood star. Madame Web has Dakota Johnson, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat-Mitzvah has the entire Sandler family, and next week Dune Part Two will have Josh Brolin. This week it’s the independent film Bleeding Love, which stars Ewan McGregor and his daughter Clara McGregor, playing a father and daughter taking a road trip to a rehab facility. It makes for tense and complex family dynamics, but it also makes for a meandering exercise, filled with the kinds of independent drama we see just about every year. Bleeding Love is in desperate need of a band-aid.
The narrative starts in the pickup truck, with the daughter riding shotgun and dad doing the driving, while she smokes a cigarette, and he is visibly annoyed. The chemistry feels authentic between the two because they are related, but writers Vera Bulder, and Ruby Caster, along with the story by Clara McGregor can’t seem to find a way to make what happens along the ride feel natural. What is a series of vignettes, each stop they make becomes a trite and relatively predictable outcome. It’s a collected series of child rebellions, as a way for Clara’s character to kick and scream her way to getting help. Of course, her Dad feels helpless, as they run into problems with the car breaking down and eventually having to look for her after she runs away.
It’s not that the effort isn’t in the right place. There is a genuine fascination with the younger McGregor, the daughter of Ewan’s first wife, a model, and someone with the chops to take on this acting stuff. The problems lie within the direction of Emma Westenberg, delivering the kind of road trip movie we’ve seen countless times before, filling the space with highs and lows of all road trips. We see cheerful moments of the two singing Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love and heartbreaking breakdowns of vulnerability where we are all struggling to just exist.
That’s not to say this is all a waste. The independent spirit is felt. In a time capsule, this could feel like a part of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood or a sequel to something like Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, but as a singular film, there is not much here. We never get to know the names of the characters. We never see an established reason for why we should care for these two. The best parts remain that it works as a message of how difficult being a parent is and that the road to recovery does not come easily.
About midway through Bleeding Love began to weigh me down. There are brief sparks of talent in front and behind the camera. Ewan is doing the work in his sleep. But there has to be a greater purpose to making a movie with your daughter. I’m glad they got to share in this journey together but for the viewer, Bleeding Love is a passion project for an audience of two, not for anyone else. That makes it a bloody mess.
BLEEDING LOVE IS PLAYING IN SELECT THEATERS FRIDAY FEBRUARY 16TH, 2024.
2 STARS
Written by: Leo Brady
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