Recovery Road: Director Emma Westenberg Talks ‘Bleeding Love’
by CHAD KENNERK
Behind the scenes: director Emma Westenberg on the set of Bleeding Love. All images courtesy of Icon Film Distribution / Emma Westenberg
Following its world premiere at South by Southwest, You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder changed its tune to the more memorable Bleeding Love, an homage to the Leona Lewis mega hit featured in the film and a fitting allusion to the emotionally fueled core of the father-daughter focused story. Ewan McGregor stars alongside his real-life daughter Clara McGregor, who produced and co-wrote the story with producer Vera Bulder and Ruby Caster. Though a work of fiction, the idea began with Clara drawing on past aspects of her own father-daughter relationship.
Bleeding Love is the story of a father (Ewan McGregor) who embarks on an impromptu road trip with his adult daughter (Clara McGregor) after she narrowly survives a drug overdose. On the road to Santa Fe, New Mexico, the pair encounter an array of offbeat characters along the way, confronting their fractured relationship in the process. As much about the journey as the destination, the indie road trip movie marks the debut feature of director Emma Westenberg. Known for her striking visuals and collaborations with artists like Janelle Monáe, Westenberg’s work includes the celebrated music video “Pynk”, as well as Monáe’s videos for “Dirty Computer” and “Screwed”, featuring Zoë Kravitz. Her television work includes episodes for series such as Long Slow Exhale, Dollface, and Little Voice.
Bleeding Love held its UK premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival and arrived on US screens via Vertical Entertainment. As the film arrives in select UK cinemas on 12 April from Icon Film Distribution, Film Review speaks with director Emma Westenberg on bringing the heartfelt, intimate father-daughter exploration vividly to the screen.
In conversation with director Emma Westenberg
Film Review (FR): Did studying art in Amsterdam influence your work and develop your eye as a filmmaker?
Emma Westenberg (EW): Yes, definitely. I went to the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and I studied in the audio/visual department. It’s a conceptual art school where you really learn to find your practice, your point of view and perspective. Which was really interesting, because they don’t teach you one way of making art. You have an idea and you can execute it in a lot of different ways. That is very helpful, because it helps you stay close to what you want to do. When I graduated from the art academy, I definitely then had to learn a lot about the rules of filmmaking and how to tell a dramatic story. The films that I graduated with and made after graduation were more visual and abstract, but I do want to tell emotional stories, so I tried to combine the two.
(FR): That’s definitely present in your work. Your producer Vera Bulder said that she knew from the beginning that you were the right director for this story. What was your take on the story and what was it about your pitch that brought you on board?
(EW): I knew Vera from ten years ago, when we started working in short films. She put my name in the hat, basically, when they were looking for directors for this project. I read the script and I liked the story; this father and daughter dynamic. Then I thought about how I would tell this story and what, for me, would be important. I always veer towards character driven narratives where the characters’ dynamic changes because of each other. When I read the script, I thought of different directions to tell the story in such a way that the characters would compel each other forward on their path.
One of the bigger changes from the script as it was before, the father and the daughter both knew [their destination]; they were driving there from the beginning. In thinking about substance abuse and destructive cycles in general, I think it always comes from this place of loss or emptiness. I wanted to connect that to their relationship and show that it’s very much that sense of abandonment that the daughter feels. That’s why she’s on this destructive path. By him showing up and also by her taking responsibility, she is on a path to healing. That was one of the ideas I had. It was very much on the character level. How do you get the characters to interact and change each other, what do the side characters say about the main characters and what does it reflect on them. How do we get them to show different tones of their relationship.
(FR): They also take a journey in terms of their communication. There’s a lot of silence in the beginning and an unsure sense of how to communicate. That communication transforms into a different kind of silence later on. Were those aspects mapped out in the script, or were they discovered in the shoot and the editing room?
(EW): I think a bit of all of it. Definitely the spaces in between were a big part of the original script. In the development, the editing, and being on set, there’s so much that happens besides dialogue. Especially when you’re in a car, there’s all these moments where you’re just together. I think the spaces in between were always an important element, for sure.
(FR): The colour grading and palette of the film sets an evolving tone. How did you use colour and composition to reveal the story?
(EW): Because of my art background, colour and composition are always a really big part of my work. Cinema is a visual medium, so colour and composition tell a story. With the cinematographer Christopher Ripley, we developed a visual language to follow her emotional arc. In the beginning, she’s self-destructive and using substances. When you’re in a cycle like that, your world becomes quite small. So we decided to shoot very little horizon, and shots with very little of her horizons, to create this kind of claustrophobic feeling. There’s not a lot of colour, it’s quite a dry, hot desert with really hard sunlight. They are kind of separated in their frames as well.
As the story progresses and they become closer, also as she’s starting to open up to the world in a different way, we bring up the camera, show more of the horizons and bring the landscape in. It becomes more colourful and also more magical because she starts to feel things in a different way. I’ve lived in the US for the last ten years and the vastness of the landscape has meant a lot to me and my personal growth. That was something I wanted to show in the movie as well, that this kind of magical aspect of these surroundings can be very healing.
(FR): When you’re in a vast landscape, you feel like a very small part of a bigger whole. Ewan and Clara have a personal connection to Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love” — and they also cover the Alessi Brothers’ “Seabird” on the end credits. Given that there is a lot of silence in the film’s final shots, hearing Ewan and Clara sing together feels like an extension of the narrative and where we leave these characters. How did that decision and recording come together?
(EW): I love musical movies and we made this movie because it is an intimate story. We keep the language of the music more intimate, but the music plays a really big part. “Seabird” is such a beautiful song. It captures the end scene and when we were editing, we tried this song and it fit so beautifully with the ending and the length also fits perfectly [Laughs.] When it ended, we thought, “What do we play now?” I thought there was something nice in the repetition of their voices coming together. It’s a different variation of it, but their voices bring it together. The composer, Raven Aartsen, who I work with a lot, made the cover [version].
(FR): Bringing any film to its destination is something of a miracle, what challenges did you face?
(EW): Oh my god, there really were. Every day there was something crazy that happened. We shot during the pandemic. We had to stop at some points, because there was a Covid scare, then we could go, but then we had to stop again. There was a lot of that going on. Then separately, it didn’t have anything to do with our production, but there was a man with a gun walking around. There were helicopters and police and we all had to hide. That was the most extreme thing [Laughs], but there are always things that happen on a film set. It’s like problem solving. At one point we lost one of our cards with footage, but then a couple of days later we found it.
(FR): Wow! And everyone was ok?
(EW): Yeah, yeah. I don’t even know exactly what happened. I don’t think he hurt anybody in the end, because we didn’t hear anything more about it. It was a really weird moment. The producer came running in and was like, "Everybody inside!” He had such a grey look on his face, everybody was like, “What’s going on?”
(FR): This is a unique project, given that the father-daughter relationship is played by a real-life father-daughter. What was your collaboration with Ewan and Clara McGregor like?
(EW): Leading up to the filming, Clara and I went through the script so many times, also with Vera, and put in little bits and pieces of her, of me, and of things we have experienced ourselves. For instance, where the guy picks up his guitar and starts playing – Clara actually had this moment where that happened. We thought it was such a funny thing to fit into that character. We looked for, first the tone that we wanted to get, and then we really workshopped the scene to make it really personal and to make it as true as possible to the characters. We watched a lot of reference movies. It was really fun to dive into the characters together in that way. Ewan just came for the shoot, but we discussed all the changes with him and for every scene we sent him the dialogue rewrites.
Then on set, we would rehearse the scene and if we felt there was something missing or if it didn’t quite click, we would workshop it a bit. They worked with improv as well, for instance, the scene with the spider bite. We had filmed that scene, but it was with a static camera. I just felt as we were filming, that we had to do that one again, because it’s such a playful moment. It’s also at a moment in the movie where after some heaviness, you want something kind of light and dynamic. We just did it again and they played on the moment where you’re not worried — but then your parent’s worry worries you [Laughs.] They improvised a lot. There was a lot of playing on set. Both of them are strong in the script and dialogue, but then also feel really comfortable improvising, so that was really fun to do. Because they are father and daughter, I think it brings something extra.
(FR): Growing up, what were the films that inspired you and the stories that resonated with you?
(EW): Very much musical stories with a lot of costumes. Big dramas. Funnily enough, Moulin Rouge is one of my all-time favourites. I probably watched that movie ten times; I love that movie. Another movie that I really loved watching and I think informed me seeing what is possible in cinema is 8 Femmes from François Ozon. It’s eight women in a house and it’s a musical, but it's also a murder mystery. It has these beautiful costumes. I really like these genre crossovers.
I also really love more character-driven, subdued dramas like Paper Moon [Laughs.] — also about a father and daughter. I love watching all types of different movies, but definitely ones where the characters are unexpected. I also love joyful or celebratory art in general — be that art, books, or movies – when it evokes this sense of imagination or wonderment. I love watching something where you’re in someone else’s world and you really are surprised by the power of imagination.
EMMA WESTENBERG is a Dutch director and was born in Berkeley, California. She studied at the renowned Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and the Cooper Union School of Art in NYC. She is a frequent collaborator of musical artists such as Janelle Monáe, which resulted in a 2018 Grammy nomination for best music video for her video “Pynk”. Emma's interest in fashion has been recognized with an award for Best New Fashion Film for her short Blue and You at the Fashion Film Festival in Milan, as well as in work for numerous brands such as Asos, Vogue, Levis, and Swatch. Her commercial for Michelob Ultra debuted during Superbowl LIII, which celebrated ASMR and featured Zoë Kravitz. Bleeding Love marks Emma’s debut feature and held its world premiere at SXSW.
Bleeding Love is available in select UK cinemas from 12 April
