The obvious draw for Emma Westenberg‘s father and daughter road movie is the casting of Ewan McGregor and his real-life daughter Clara in the lead roles. This is both a strength and a weakness for engaging with this addiction drama. It helps in that a believable chemistry is assured, and the back and forth between the two has the underpinning of a deep love, no matter how much vitriol is hurled. It’s a definite weakness in that it quite frankly gets in the way in the story itself.

The unnamed father and daughter are driving through New Mexico to visit an artist friend of the father’s. The pair are estranged and dad has picked up his daughter from hospital after she’d overdosed mere hours before. Dad is claiming that he is encouraging his daughter to take up art again as a means of therapy. Really, a former addict himself, he’s driving her to a rehab centre. Along the way the pair tentatively reconnect and meet a series of eccentric characters.

In many ways keeping the characters anonymous is to the film’s detriment. Perhaps the creative team figured that the casting is so front and centre that there was no point even attempting suspension of disbelief. But the real-life baggage gets in the way. Both the addiction and abandonment storyline are pulled from Ewan and Clara’s real-life relationship. Both have had substance issues, and there was apparently a rift between them when McGregor left his wife to be with Mary Elizabeth Winstead. With Clara being a co-writer there’s an unavoidable sense of some dirty laundry being aired along the road.

The film is at its best when the two are forced to interact with other people, such as a garrulous trucker played by Kim Zimmer who helps the pair out when Dad’s own pickup conks out. Another standout is co-writer Vera Bulder as a sex-worker who provides some impromptu gynaecology after Daughter is bitten by a spider. Otherwise the narrative is slightly reliant on the relationship being spelled out through either blazing rows or woozy flashbacks. Given that they have the asset of an actual father/daughter team, there doesn’t seem to be enough confidence there to just have them exist in the same space. If you can’t have a few meandering character moments in a road movie, when can you?

Yet there are a few moments that land, and the dynamic of an ex-addict father watching his daughter battle with the same demons is a potent one. It’s palpably difficult watching McGregor wrestle with just how much slack he can allow her before she’ll bolt like a spooked horse. But it’s possible to see the script shying away from getting too intense, even when Daughter puts herself, understandably given she’s in the grip of withdrawal, in some precarious situations. It all adds to Bleeding Love coming across as narratively compromised. It’s a shame that a film that prides itself on a sense of authenticity lurches too often into triteness instead of finding an organic emotional resonance.

In select cinemas from Fri 12 Apr 2024