Bleeding Love (2023) review: Bleeding funny and moving, too

Who doesn’t love a good road trip? While we’re at it, who doesn’t love a good road trip movie? For anyone who thought the genre might be running out of gas, here’s a film that’s guaranteed to put you back on track. Bleeding Love is a warm, funny and emotional journey that sees an estranged father and daughter spending a bit of time in each others’ pockets.

Starring Ewan McGregor and directed by Emma Westenberg, it’s a story of just how close addiction can push family ties to breaking point. Despite this seemingly sad premise, it’s never short on laughs and so it’s easy get on board with the characters and storyline.

Ever since the days of Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, one face that’s guaranteed to put the proverbials on seats is McGregor. The Pride of Scotland has always been so relatable as an actor that we just warm to his characters – be they Alex Law or Mark Renton, flaws and all – in an instant. Therefore he was almost a natural choice for this role, but great acting alone was not enough here, oh no. This is a semi-autobiographical flick and nothing less than a large helping of empathy would have done.

Yet Bleeding Love goes a step further still: if you can have McGregor drawing on his own experiences, why not have his real-life daughter playing opposite? Step forward Clara McGregor, who, incidentally, also co-wrote the screenplay. It’s no secret – certainly not anymore, at least – that the relationship with her famous father has had its share of difficulties. You can sing the praises of method acting all you like, but there’s no substitute for the real thing, which is beyond all doubt when you watch the pair play so effortlessly off one another.

On this rocky road to a Santa Fe rehab clinic, they encounter an array of colourful characters, some more questionable than others, making this a kind of Easy Rider for the ages. All the road movie clichés are there – desert, motels, even banjos – but that’s as far as it goes. To be fair, these are unavoidable anyway, but they do allow us to subconsciously reminisce about an eclectic array of classics such as Almost Famous, The Hitcher and even Pulp Fiction.

There’s little in the way of cliffhangers, but the intention is to leave your face aglow rather than aghast, and it’s as wholesome as a tale of addiction can be. The McGregors are so likeable and, of course, believable, that you could be forgiven at times for thinking that this is a documentary. The script helps to ensure that every aspect is so accessible, no matter what your cinematic tastes may be. It’s never too cryptic, which again might not be for everyone at first, but its transparency is another of its undoubted strengths.

How it manages to deal with such dark issues so effortlessly and light-heartedly is anyone’s guess, but the natural, human touch to Westenberg’s direction is the perfect foil; perhaps even a better match than the two leads. Ewan McGregor is soon to hit the Paramount network in the series A Gentleman in Moscow. If the team behind that is this good, viewers are in for something uber-special.

Having said that, this could prove to be the most potent father-daughter collaboration since Frank and Nancy Sinatra first recorded Somethin’ Stupid all the way back in 1967. Bleeding Love will be in UK cinemas from April 12.