BLEEDING LOVE - Mark Reviews Movies

Bleeding Love, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 15, 2024

The tough, tenuous bond between a father and daughter is at the heart of Bleeding Love, which follows the pair on a road trip toward an initially unspecified but still obvious destination. The story itself is left vague at first, too, but that doesn't make the narrative beats and ultimate point of the tale any less predictable.

It almost doesn't matter to director Emma Westenberg's movie, because it primarily revolves around a pair of performances that cut to the tricky, painful core of the central relationship. On one side, Ewan McGregor plays the father, a man desperately trying to do right after a long stretch of knowing he has come up short in his life. On the other, Clara McGregor plays the daughter, who hasn't seen or spoken to her father in some time and, following a potentially tragic event, now finds herself cooped up in an old pickup truck with a man she basically doesn't know anymore.

In case the shared surname isn't enough of a giveaway, yes, these two actors are a father and daughter in real life, so there's an obvious, intrinsic connection between the two that transcends the particulars, as well as the shortcomings, of this story. Knowing and feeling that in these performances add a certain poignancy to the whole enterprise, too.

We don't—and probably shouldn't—know how much or how little of this tale or the specifics of this relationship comes from some basis in reality (The younger McGregor has a story credit, although that's such a broad category that the contribution is difficult to determine—if it even means anything in regards to some real-life inspiration). That's beside the point, anyway. On the screen, the bond between these two characters is palpable in a way that justifies this sort of stunt casting.

Much of the narrative amounts to these two characters talking about and around what's troubling them, as well as what has been troubling them for a while, so the quiet looks, the unfinished statements, and everything else that's left unspoken until later mean a lot here. Because it's these two actors navigating those moments, those little details feel as if they mean even more.

The father is driving his daughter across the desert highways of the Southwest, heading toward Santa Fe. Things aren't on good or even speaking terms between them from the start. No matter how many times and ways the father attempts to get his daughter talking, she doesn't respond or only offers a few words. At one point, she attempts to run away across an expanse of barren land, but there's nowhere for her to go even if she wanted to keep up the chase with her father.

To cut to the chase on a narrative level, we soon learn that the daughter is addicted to narcotics and experienced a near-fatal overdose about 12 hours prior. The father got the call from her mother, his ex-wife, and now, he's driving his daughter, as he says, to an art commune of sorts, where the daughter's parents hope she'll find some inspiration to return to painting and use her art as an outlet for the self-destructive parts of her.

It probably doesn't need to be said that the father's story isn't exactly or at all honest. If Ruby Caster's screenplay has an obvious flaw, it's in this deception—not the father's, of course, because he thinks he needs to lie to keep things calm (How much does that say about him, how he perceives his daughter, and their relationship in general?), but the movie's. There's so much tension pre-built into this scenario, with a father who's convinced his daughter might die if he doesn't do something about it now and a daughter who believes her father's concern is both hypocritical and much too little much too late.

After all, the other not-so-secret element of this story is that the father himself is an addict—a recovering alcoholic, who regularly appears in his daughter's memories with a drink in his hand and an intoxicated smile on his face. Later in the movie, when all of these past and present tensions are finally spoken in loud and aching tones, the daughter points out how much of her personality and behavior was learned from him.

As honest as it is, that kind of dialogue is the stuff of melodrama, and here's why the performances from the McGregors are so vital to such blatantly arranged material coming close to working. The understandable resentment in the daughter's—and the daughter actor's—voice is cutting, and the look of wounded agony on the father's—and the father actor's—face in reaction is deep. They cut to the honesty of this scene, as well as a number of others, in such a way that either don't notice or don't mind how the screenplay manipulates or puts a too-fine point on such matters.

Even so, there's little avoiding how predictable and formulaic the course of the story remains—from a bonding sing-along in the truck, to a number of little adventures, to that inevitable falling out, to a scared-straight scene involving a relapse. Bleeding Love greatly benefits from its casting, as this real-life father and daughter are fully invested in the emotional trials and bittersweet joys of their on-screen relationship, but the movie surrounding them doesn't quite reach a similar degree of authenticity.

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