Film Review – Bleeding Love (2023)

For her debut feature, director Emma Westenberg has chosen a script guaranteed to whet the appetite. Essentially a road trip movie, Bleeding Love puts the spotlight on an estranged father and daughter, with real life father and daughter Ewan and Clara McGregor in the lead roles. That their off-screen relationship has had its share of troubles in the past could make their casting a little too on the nose, but this is a film with both personal and universal appeal.

We never know their names – they’re just Father and Daughter – and we join them well into their road trip to Santa Fe. Theirs is clearly a turbulent relationship: their conversations are short and terse, but there are moments when a genuine affection wells up, indicating a glimmer of hope. As the miles accumulate, and they cross paths with a number of eccentric locals, the reasons for both their journey and their estrangement unfold, yet their relationship is still something of a rollercoaster and their future – together or apart – remains uncertain.

The opening plunges us immediately into the middle of their trip and, by implication, their relationship and, as they cross the never-ending New Mexico desert, there’s just enough clues to piece together and help us understand their situation. It’s an intriguing challenge but, as we hear and see more, mainly in the form of quick flashbacks, the picture becomes clearer and our fascination diminishes. From this point, the onus is on the script and the cast to keep us engaged and the two leads definitely deliver. They have an easy, natural chemistry on screen, and when they sing along at the tops of their voices to Leona Lewis’s Bleeding Love, it’s one of the film’s stand-out moments. And it’s a song with personal memories for Clara McGregor, who co-wrote the script.

But, as the trip progresses and becomes more bumpy, the same happens to the narrative. The locals provide brief, enjoyable entertainment, but there’s a sense that some of them could have been explored further and allowed to play a more important part in the action. As things stand, even more pressure falls on the shoulders of the two leads while the audience is starting to work out where the story is leading. It’s not difficult but, thankfully, there’s enough ambiguity in the climax to spare us from a cliched happy ending. In bringing the story to the screen, Westenberg is clearly aware of its personal nature for her two main actors, but she’s also savvy enough to realise that every family has its problems and that’s where the heart of the film’s appeal lies.

★★★

In UK cinemas 12^th April / Ewan McGregor, Clara McGregor, Vera Bulder, Jake Weary, Devyn McDowell / Dir: Emma Westenberg / Icon Film Distribution / 15 

Watch our video interview with director Emma Westenberg

About the Author

Freda Cooper

Editor

Freda is a Senior Writer at The People's Movies. A lifelong movie fan and a film critic for over ten years, Freda’s natural habitat is the darkened rooms frequented by fellow cineastes. She can also be found asking questions of some of the biggest names in the business – from Cate Blanchett to Daniel Craig or Mike Leigh to Pete Docter – or crafting reviews for a number of sites and publications, including The People’s Movies. And listeners to BBC Local Radio can catch her views on the latest releases. She always – and probably always will – cite The Third Man as her favourite film of all time. Her top ten? That’s a moveable feast …..

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