Bleeding Love

Grade: C+

Bleeding Love stars Ewan McGregor and his daughter Clara McGregor as father and daughter. They aren’t given character names. In the movie, Ewan split from his wife a while ago, and now has a new marriage and family. In real life, he separated from Clara’s mother in 2017, and is now married to actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead, with whom he has a child.

In the film, the father and daughter haven’t seen each other for a while. He’s perhaps been too preoccupied with his new wife and little boy. Clara’s character is less than a day removed from a drug overdose that almost took her life. Ewan has decided to drive her 14 hours to a rehab. She doesn’t know about that part; she thinks they’re just road-tripping to “go visit an artist friend.” The Ewan character is a recovering alcoholic and addict, with – by all appearances – a significant amount of sober time under his belt.

In their travels, they come into a series of encounters with colorful characters. These feel like chapters or chunks, which makes me think this would have been right at home as a 5-8 episode miniseries on a streaming service. I can see it now: “Last week, the truck broke down and they met an exuberant tow truck driver. Today, Clara – while peeing on the side of the road – will get a spider bite in a place she’d rather not show her father. And tune in next week when they give a ride to a prostitute with a pipe dream of being a Broadway playwright!” Performances are strong (Ewan still has a great singing voice, 23 years after Moulin Rouge), there’s chemistry, obviously – and director Emma Westenberg gives us an Oliver Stony feel. Stone’s U-Turn, in particular, is what it reminded me of.

So it’s unfortunate that Bleeding Love ultimately goes south. There’s an inherent lack of follow through in the screenplay. Conversations that would have been fascinating to have heard the entirety of aren’t allowed to play out, due to one interruption or another. At another point, when Ewan is offered a free shot at the bar, we never see him take it or decline, and therefore don’t find out if he relapses there. Filmmakers sometimes like to leave their work up for interpretation. I get that – but here, it comes off as more of a lack of payoff or resolution than an artistic choice.

Scenes are confusingly edited. The last scene by the side of the road: is it a flashback? Are we still in the present? How could someone disappear so quickly in such vast, flat, open desert land? The ending feels like the result of a coin toss, or whatever a test audience preferred to see – like the last shot of Basic Instinct. That final shot could have gone either way, with the movie staying the same. I’m not sure exactly how much life was imitated in the art here, but this must have been quite the experience for Ewen and Clara.

Grade: C+