Bleeding Love

With its subject matter, You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder is hackneyed low-key, low-budget banality that can’t be faulted much in its details and it’s interesting because it brings Ewan McGregor and his real-life daughter Clara McGregor together in front of the camera as the characters of a man and his daughter. [Karlovy Vary International Film Festival] (02.07.2023)

This intimate desert road-movie is built on the performances of its two protagonists, with McGregor’s real-life daughter playing his on-screen daughter, which adds a notable extra layer to the film. At least in the first half, however, the film takes a very superficial approach to the relationship between the two characters, so its dominant elements are rather sentimental flashbacks, frequent pee breaks and occasional humorous encounters with supporting characters representing the usual clichés associated with the American South. Thanks to McGregor’s presence, the motif of drug withdrawals will be familiar to Trainspotting fans (and there’s also a train). You will thus have to wait for the proper screaming, remorse and mutual catharsis, but the whole extraordinary journey and emotional redemption at the end make it worthwhile. (03.07.2023)

Even though intimate stories about the reconnection between an estranged parent and offspring are a feature in practically every edition of the festival, one I sometimes tire of with its thematic weariness, Second Chance successfully managed to break out of this lethargy and totally suited me. It almost teeters on the edge of melodrama, almost. But it never falls over that edge. The chemistry of characters of the father and daughter played by a real-life father-daughter duo works very well. There's nothing much to fault about it. A nice little film. [KVIFF 2023] (13.09.2023)