Bleeding Love opens with a father (Ewan McGregor) driving his pickup truck across the desert.  Sitting next to him is his 20 year-old daughter (Clara McGregor).

Over the course of Bleeding Love, we come to know quite a lot about these two.  We know that the Father is divorced from the Daughter’s mother and that he has since remarried and has started a second family.  We know that the Daughter has never met her Father’s new wife.  We know that the Father has been sober for several years and now regularly attends AA, where he talks about the many regrets that continue to haunt him.  We know that the Daughter grew up both loving her Father and also being scared of the way he would get when he was drunk.  We know the Father is a landscaper.  We know the Daughter is a painter who feels like she has lost whatever once inspired her.  Father follows the rules.  Daughter shoplifts tiny bottles of liquor from a gas station.  Father talks a lot because he’s not sure what to say.  Daughter is often silent for the same reason.  Father is concerned about Daughter.  Daughter barely survived and overdose just a few hours before Father announced they were going to see a friend of his.  

We learn a lot about the Father and the Daughter but we never learn their names.  (Father calls Daughter by her childhood nickname of “Turbo,” even though she specifically asks him not to.)  They’re meant to be universal characters, standing in for all fathers and daughters who are trying to figure out how to relate to each other.  Appropriately enough, the characters are played by an actual father-daughter team, Ewan and Clara McGregor.  (Clara also had a hand in writing and producing the film.)

Bleeding Love follows Father and Daughter as they drive across the desert.  (Father has told Daughter that they’re just visiting an old friend but what Daughter doesn’t know is that old friend also runs a drug rehab.)  Along the way, they sometimes argue and they sometimes bond, especially over the music playing on the radio.  (There’s a reason why this film is named after a Leona Lewis song.)  They meet the usual collection of eccentrics that always tend to populate road movies like this.  I liked Kim Zimmer’s performance as Elsie, the driver of a tow truck who takes Father and Daughter to her cousin’s birthday party.  (At the party, Daughter tricks a man in a clown suit into giving her beer.)  I also liked the performance of Vera Bulder, playing a prostitute named Tommy who helps Father and Daughter after the latter gets bitten by a spider.  Not everyone on the road is as friendly as Elsie or Tommy, as both Father and Daughter eventually discover.

When Bleeding Love first started, I was a bit skeptical as to whether or not the film would work.  There are a few moments where the film does seem to be trying a bit too hard to force an emotional response from the viewer.  However, both McGregors are strong, likable, and sympathetic in their roles and their natural chemistry as father-and-daughter goes a long way towards making the relationship of their characters in the film feel real and poignant.  Ewan pours himself into a scene where he talks about his past mistakes while Clara plays Daughter as someone who is angry and impulsive but not stupid.  I related to Daughter and her relationship with her Father.  There’s a lot of emotional truth to be found in their sometimes angry, sometime funny conversations on the road. 

Thanks to Clara and Ewan McGregor, Bleeding Love works as a portrait of regret and addiction and a celebration of the bond between child and parent.