Vague Visages’ Bleeding Love review contain minor spoilers. Emma Westenberg’s 2023 movie on Amazon features Clara McGregor, Ewan McGregor and Kim Zimmer. Check out the VV home page for more film reviews, along with cast/character summaries, streaming guides and complete soundtrack song listings.

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Emma Westenberg’s father-daughter drama Bleeding Love is a travel movie that sticks closely to previous genre routes. The decision to take the road more traveled robs the film of the chance to find interesting detours of its own and leaves a lot of territory unexplored, but the chemistry between its charming leads is ultimately enough to keep the engine ticking over for the duration of the journey. 

Bleeding Love’s central roles are played by Ewan McGregor and his real-life daughter, Clara. Their characters are left unnamed, credited simply as “Father” and “Daughter,” respectively, although the former likes to refer to his child as “Turbo.” Clara doesn’t like the childhood nickname, as it’s an aching reminder of a fractured relationship. After years of estrangement, a crisis brings the protagonists back together and sends them on a long drive across the American Southwest. 

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More details about the protagonists’ lives come out as they rumble through the desert. It’s revealed that the father is an alcoholic who abandoned his wife and child as his life spiraled out of control, although he has since sobered up and started afresh with a shiny new family. Unsurprisingly, the daughter has developed substance issues of her own. Throughout the journey, she sneaks drinks from shoplifted miniatures and jumps at any opportunity to shake off her dad and pop a pill. The daughter says that she isn’t addicted, and that she’s just a young person having fun, but as she furtively snatches up unfinished drinks of diner customers, it’s hard to be convinced. 

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Like any good road trip movie, Bleeding Love has the protagonists bump into all sorts of eccentric characters along the way, from a balloon artist with dreams of country-rap stardom to the obligatory Hooker with a Heart of Gold, although the character (Tommy) is really more of a Sex Worker with a Surprising Knowledge of Spiders, played with effervescent charm by Vera Bulder.

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Bleeding Love’s side characters flit in and out of the movie, but the McGregors are always at the center. The elder performer plays the father as the sort of soft-around-the-edges character who has been tenderized by bad life decisions. He’s dorky and earnest, a man who seems deeply grateful for the quiet, regular life he’s now living. 

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There’s a joke about Bleeding Love’s father character looking younger than his 47 years, and he really does, despite the fact that McGregor is actually 52. It might be a little suspect for a man with such a hard-lived past to look quite so fresh-faced, but that’s the only thing about the character that doesn’t ring true. 

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Clara McGregor may not have her father’s Scottish brogue, but she inherited his easy charisma and plays Bleeding Love’s daughter character with an intriguing mix of joy, rage, vulnerability and a withdrawal-induced twitchiness. She also has a spectacular smile and the ability to re-angle it slightly to achieve an unsettling effect; a Mia Goth-esque trick that allows the actress to go from alluring to unhinged in the blink of an eye. An A24 horror flick seems like a natural next stop.

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Bleeding Love finds itself rolling on without a clear destination in mind. It seems unwilling to drive into the messier emotional territory it would have to navigate if it really wanted to get to the heart of its main characters, their addictions and a shared fractured relationship. The McGregors find themselves working with the hand-break on, circling these issues but never really getting to push their characters or their story forward.  

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However, Westenberg takes viewers in the opposite direction during Bleeding Love, with flashbacks to the protagonists’ happier days flickering throughout the film. All big smiles and sunshine, these nostalgic inserts function as a heavy-handed attempt to make the movie more affecting. It’s a tactic which, ironically, ends up being far less impactful than the subtler techniques employed by the other recent Scotland-adjacent tale of fathers, daughters and their demons, Aftersun. 

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Of course, the reason that so many of us end up gravitating towards the same roads is that they get us where we want to go. Midway through Bleeding Love, Ewan McGregor’s character excitedly turns up a radio after recognizing the opening bars of the titular Leona Lewis track. He gleefully sings along, and although his daughter initially responds with a dead-eyed glare, she soon finds herself laughing and then howling through the rest of the song with her father. It’s a familiar cinematic moment, but it still plays well in Bleeding Love, especially with a pair of actors as likable as Ewan and Clara McGregor.

Ross McIndoe (@OneBigWiggle) is a freelance writer based in Glasgow. Other bylines include The Skinny, Film School Rejects and Bright Wall/Dark Room.

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