By Lila Anderson and Edu Kenedi
Edited by Elizabeth Cherchia
This week your humble reviewers, biceps and triceps, watched Love Lies Bleeding, directed by Rose Glass, starring Kristen Stewart, Katy M. O’Brian, Dave Franco and Ed Harris. The film follows the love story of Lou (Stewart) and Jackie (O’Brian) as they try to balance the former’s criminally dysfunctional family and the latter’s dream of competitive bodybuilding. Calling this movie just a romance, or a story about bodybuilding, or a violent revenge tale would not quite do it justice, but maybe these two reviews will?
Edu’s Take: sapphic thrills and bloody kills
I am neither a lesbian nor a bodybuilder, so obviously I am uniquely qualified to comment on Love Lies Bleeding. Since I walked out of the cinema, I have been asking myself how best to write about a film that cannot quite be put into a neat box. Indeed, I have struggled to find the words to capture exactly how I feel about it. Technically and thematically this film is strong, featuring memorable visuals and a few outstanding performances. And while I had a great time in the theatre, some of the shock factor may be too much for viewers.
Love Lies Bleeding is director Rose Glass’ second feature film and with it she has certainly cemented herself as an artist with a unique vision. She shows creativity in her use of different camera angles and unique colour palettes, particularly a striking red and black aesthetic used for flashbacks, as well as an extremely well crafted montage in the first act. There are also great instances of foreshadowing and characters mirroring one another, showing the depth of care that was put into the film. Glass also has a great eye for the human physique, something that shines in the bodybuilding-centric film, particularly in memorable close ups of rippling muscles or beads of sweat. In only a few quick scenes, the director transports the audience into early-90s, small town New Mexico, showing a flair for creating a world with real characters and lived-in places that goes beyond sweeping desert vistas or Breaking Bad’s yellow and orange New Mexico colour palette.
Another strength that Rose Glass demonstrates in Love Lies Bleeding is her ability to span genres and themes almost seamlessly. The audience is bounced around from romance to domestic drama to sports movie to revenge thriller on what is (mostly) a smooth ride. There are some surreal scenes of drug-induced hallucinations that the audience may find a bit strange, though I enjoyed them. The final set piece of the film does feature a strange, surreal, and gigantic swing, but I must say it landed for me. A disclaimer: this is a pretty gory and violent film. At this point I have to shout out the film’s makeup supervisor Bryan Perkal who delivers three shocking and gory scenes that are forever seared into my mind. Of course, some viewers may find the flip flopping between intimate sexual contact and pugilistic brutality off-putting, but I think Glass has managed to find the perfect balance.
Overall, I think Love Lies Bleeding is a romantically gory, visually unique film. Its shock factor may alienate some audience members (such as the elderly couple who were in our screening and had no idea what was in store for them), but the story’s twists and turns kept me interested and entertained throughout.
Lila’s Take: mystical images and sweaty montages
Love Lies Bleeding is a movie that leaves you just a little bit stunned. Much like my fellow non-lesbian non-bodybuilder, I knew I liked it, but simply found myself slightly confused as to exactly why I found it quite so compelling.
The lead actors’ stellar performances may be part of the reason. Kristen Stewart plays Lou. As a burnout gym manager with a strange relationship to her parents, Lou is a sort of 2024 Bella Swan remix, new and improved. Allow me to defend my position: In a relationship with a strong, silent woman instead of a strong, silent vampire; unreasonably smart and too well read for the people around her but nicely self-effacing on this point; and in possession of an iconic oversized pickup truck. Despite her deadpan persona, she conceals a sweet and caring side.
Katy M. O’Brien plays the opposite personality in Jackie, a suntanned gentle giant gym specimen with a penchant for outbursts of righteous violence. Her sweet manner, which belies the animalistic rage of which she is truly capable, explains why Lou becomes enamoured of Jackie. A well-cast duo, their chemistry, perhaps the result of the roids they shoot up together, is palpable. Director Rose Glass makes effective use of the montage to capture the early moments of their romance, a visual love language of egg yolks shimmering and coffee dripping down bronzed decolletage.
The plot of Love Lies Bleeding borders on formulaic, but this is not a detraction: on the contrary, the time-tested narrative conventions of slow revelation of family trauma and the emotional melodrama of new love provides the ideal backdrop for a not-so-conventional cinematic duo.
It should be mentioned how the movie has a veritable field day with sexual symbolism. The villain, Lou’s effectively off-putting father, played by a sinister Ed Harris, hides the forensic evidence of his crimes in not-so-subtly yonic crack on the face of the Texas desert. Of course, the crack later comes to have its revenge upon him. He tortures his daughter with a finger in her open wound in an on-the-nose but well-timed last bloody moment.
Love Lies Bleeding’s brilliant Americana sets and colour palettes call to mind other Bonnie and Clyde stories. We might think of the erotic euphoria of the underachieving couple in True Romance, or the sweetness of a little gesture like murdering for your beloved in Badlands. The stylized sets of all these films, both era-specific and strangely timeless, connected Love Lies Bleeding to this sort of twisted fantasy.