Road Trip Reconciliation — BLEEDING LOVE
By Maribeth Thueson
In 1996, Ewan McGregor starred in his breakout role as a heroin addict in Trainspotting. His daughter Clara was a baby at the time. Now, 28 years later, Clara has made her own movie about being an addict, Bleeding Love, in which she plays a young woman whose estranged father, played by Ewan, takes her on a road trip from San Diego to New Mexico after she nearly dies of an overdose. If that’s not meta enough, Ewan and his wife Eve Mavrakis divorced and Ewan subsequently married Mary Elizabeth Winstead and had a son with her, just as his character Father in the film (both characters are unnamed) leaves Daughter and her mother and starts a new family. Plus, both actors have had brushes with addiction.
So are they their characters? Not quite, although their experiences must have bled into the script, which was co-written by Clara and co-produced by both McGregors. Father tells Daughter that he is taking her to see an old friend of his who is an artist so that she can reconnect with her love of painting, but that’s just a ruse to get her into rehab. Father is open about his history of alcoholism, but despite their similarities, the characters have difficulty connecting and the first part of their journey is fraught with resentment and stilted conversation. Director Emma Westenberg, who shot the entire film with a hand-held camera so shaky you’re likely to get seasick, resorts to extreme close-ups and needless slow motion to fill the gaps.
Inexplicably, they drive along back roads rather than the interstate, but this allows Father and Daughter to meet quirky characters — a purportedly psychic tow truck driver, a clown on parole, a prostitute with unusual medical knowledge, and an menacingly scary married couple — all of whom are more interesting than the leads. All the while Daughter demonstrates her desperation to ingest pretty much any substance on the sly.
It’s not until they wind up at a campy, nautically-themed motel halfway through the movie that they are able to relax with each other and recapture the ability to have fun together that they used to have. But then Daughter learns the truth about their destination and their raw emotions emerge, destroying their fragile truce and leading Daughter to endanger her life once again.
The performances of both McGregors during the last portion of the movie are what save it from being a series of clichés. There is a realness to their emotions and their relationship that draws you in and makes you care about them. Bleeding Love is worth seeing for that alone. It also gives notice that Clara McGregor is a filmmaker to watch. If she can come up with a better script and better execution, she may really have something, and we may get a film worth watching for all its elements.
Originally published at http://behindtherabbitproductions.wordpress.com on July 21, 2024.
