There’s a fine line between stylized direction and direction that is so fussy that it gets in the way of a film’s actors. Unfortunately for Emma Westenberg’s directorial debut, “You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder,” that’s a line she does not navigate successfully. She’s not helped much by the underdeveloped script by Ruby Caster, who shares story credits with Vera Bulder and star-producer Clara McGregor (“American Horror Story”). Although co-lead Ewan McGregor (Clara’s real-life father) gives a devastatingly vulnerable performance, the filmmakers make every obvious choice they can, leaving little room for nuance.
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The McGregors star as an unnamed Father and 20-year-old Daughter on a road trip through New Mexico. It’s slowly revealed that she’s just been released from the hospital after a drug overdose that stopped her heart. The Father, a recovered addict himself, has been absent from her life for many years, so she’s less than receptive to his attempt to help her now. Although the Father carries great regret for what he put his daughter and ex-wife through, for much of the film, he is unable to express these feelings.
Father-daughter stories are a rich terrain to explore emotional baggage, especially inherited trauma, as we saw in last year’s excellent “Aftersun.” However, unlike Charlotte Wells’ subtle, sharp script, Caster’s screenplay lays everything on the surface early on, leaving little to discover as the film progresses on this journey with them, other than clichéd plot points that add little depth or insight into their situation.
Structurally, the film haphazardly employs flashbacks to the Daughter’s childhood, when the Father’s addiction made him seem like the coolest dad ever until it didn’t. Unfortunately, these play like a bleached-out, low-rent Terrence Malick, and as the film plods on, become a crutch to lead the audience down an intended emotional road that would more effectively have been established through stronger storytelling in the present.
The film is at its most successful when it shows the severity of the Daughter’s addiction and her deep denial. She’s at that stage where she’ll straight-faced tell her father she doesn’t need to take drugs and alcohol every day, then immediately sneaks a gulp of a glass of wine someone has left at a diner counter when he’s not looking. For all its failings, the film at least understands just how powerful addiction’s grip can be.
Unfortunately, while on this journey together, the Father and Daughter are surrounded by cartoon-like supporting characters who feel about as real as the artificial plastic little green aliens that decorate one of their homes. As often happens in films set in rural America, these characters are all overly quirky, hollow concepts of what people are like in this part of America.
To make things worse, the film’s camera work is as shaky as its characters are thin. Westenberg and cinematographer Christopher Ripley constantly keep the camera in motion, with aggressive whip pans between the two passengers in their car or shaky cam as they move through the desert. At one point, the Father attends an AA meeting where he pours his heart out about his past behavior, yet rather than have the camera hold on his face during this emotional moment, it shakes throughout, blurring Ewan’s soulful expression.
And that’s a real shame because Ewan is such a great actor that he brings out an emotional honesty that keeps the film grounded. He’s the kind of actor that makes this kind of raw excavation of inner turmoil look easy. His chemistry with his daughter is, of course, naturally there, but while Clara shows promise, often the work to get on the same emotional wavelength comes through in a way that is jarring in contrast. The frenetic camera work, and particularly its strange placement in the aforementioned monologue scene, does not do her performance any favors.
In the end, the film packs an emotional wallop in spite of itself, due largely to the final beat with Ewan, whose face is finally framed with a steady shot, allowing the decades of regret and love and all of their complexities to shine through. If it weren’t for his compelling performance, there wouldn’t be much of a film at all. [C-]
