Casting father and daughter in a drama loosely based mostly on their very own relationship creates a fuzzy line between actuality and fiction in You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder.
This uneven indie road-trip drama is at occasions too by-the-numbers however is all the time charming due to its two stars, who maintain the display all through. Ewan McGregor performs a landscaper with a pickup truck driving his daughter, performed by Clara McGregor, to a vacation spot he doesn’t share together with her, or with us, till effectively into the movie. We instantly see the gap between them, although, which is as huge because the huge, empty New Mexico panorama they’re passing, a lonely expanse of desert and scrub. He’s clearly nervous with fear, and she or he is belligerent. Their characters haven’t any names, a tool that doesn’t serve any goal, as a result of these persons are very particular. However the sluggish reveal of data works higher than the no-name trick, permitting their actions and dialog, or silence, to create a tone of naturalism as we study the backstory.
You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder
The Backside Line
Saved by its charismatic stars.
We get a clue when the daughter slips a few mini-bottles of alcohol in her jacket pocket at a road-stop comfort retailer, and one other when the daddy has a cellphone dialog searching for a spot at a rehab facility. We come to know that she has been within the hospital that morning on account of an overdose of tablets, that he’s taking her for assist prefer it or not, and that they hardly know one another anymore as a result of he left his marriage when she was a toddler.
There’s greater than stunt casting at work right here. Each Ewan and Clara McGregor have been public about their particular person struggles with habit and their estrangement, issues now behind them. Clara co-wrote the movie’s story with Vera Bulder and Ruby Caster, and Ewan has stated that though the street journey is fiction, You Sing Loud is “a mirrored image of us and our story.” Different particulars are additionally invented. The daughter within the movie was a lot youthful than Clara when her dad and mom divorced, however like her on-screen counterpart she has acknowledged having had a tough time accepting her father’s second spouse (in actuality Mary Elizabeth Winstead, with whom McGregor has a younger youngster, like the daddy within the movie). The emotional wounds on either side of the parent-child relationship are depicted with uncooked honesty right here, because the characters drive towards what the daddy hopes is a contemporary begin in each method.
That real-life subtext is tough to disregard, and at occasions looks as if a scrim between us and the fictional world. That’s largely as a result of the movie’s construction and path — that is the primary characteristic directed by Emma Westenberg, who has made music movies and episodes of the sequence Dollface and Little Voice — are at occasions plodding and apparent. Because it’s laborious to totally enter the panorama of the movie, the real-life relationship by no means fairly disappears.
There are some sleek touches, together with sporadic fast flashbacks from the daughter, who sees herself as a small woman together with her playful, attentive father. However too usually we are able to sense the wheels turning because the plot strikes on. There are detours on the street to introduce some eccentric characters, presumably to liven issues up. A brash tow truck driver (Kim Zimmer) takes them to her household dwelling, the place her nephew (Jake Weary) wears a clown costume at a celebration. There’s a frenzied rush to discover a pharmacy and a free-spirited hooker (Bulder, additionally one of many movie’s producers) who dances amid glittering lights on the street. Christopher Ripley’s cinematography successfully captures the vacancy throughout them for a lot of the journey, and the colourful locations they land, however there are method too many fairly pictures of the horizon.
Even when the story appears awkwardly goosed, the actors maintain us watching. Ewan McGregor, in fact, is one in every of our greatest and most versatile actors, plausible as Obi-Wan Kenobi or an bizarre man attempting to save lots of his daughter from a downward spiral into habit. Clara McGregor, a mannequin and actress who has appeared in American Horror Story: NYC, has an arresting face and is totally pure on this position. That wasn’t a given. Movie historical past is plagued by individuals who have failed at enjoying variations of themselves, however she holds her personal on display.
At its greatest, You Sing Loud is bracing. In a buoyant, cheerful second, the daddy and daughter sing alongside to Leona Lewis’ pop hit “Bleeding Love,” solely to be interrupted by a cellphone name from the daddy’s younger son — a name that clearly unsettles the daughter. It’s the sort of good juxtaposition the movie might have used extra of.
And there’s an indignant blow-up close to the top, when each father and daughter unleash their feelings: his honest concern and remorse, her damage and broken sense of herself. That visceral scene wanted a build-up, however perhaps one which was extra dynamic from the beginning.
