There is something so satisfyingly lurid about Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding. It’s bold. In a world full of timid choices and thinkpieces, Love Lies Bleeding really, truly does not give one solitary fuck what you think of it.
The film follows amateur bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian), who drifts into a small New Mexico town on her way to a competition in Vegas. She’s sleeping under an overpass when she meets gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart), who looks at her like a cartoon wolf looks like a steak. (The frankness of queer lust in this movie is off-the-charts and much appreciated.) Jackie’s had her share of transactional sex, but what she strikes up with Lou is real–that it gives her a roof over her head and free steroids is just a nice bonus.
But their romance comes with abundant complications. There’s Lou’s scuzzy brother-in-law (Dave Franco), who beats her beloved sister, and the way Lou can barely contain her fury towards him; her gun-runner father, Lou Sr., a magnificently slimy Ed Harris, looms in the background. Jackie already slept with the brother-in-law (she needed a job interview) and is working for the dad (the interview panned out). The steroids are making her perceptions wobblier, her emotions less predictable. Lou’s sort-of ex, the giggly, infatuated, and ever-high Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov, stealing the movie), is always around. If she senses on some level that she repulses and annoys Lou, who would never want her if there’s literally anyone else on offer, she’s not letting herself realize it–though she’s sharper than she might seem. Love Lies Bleeding has a good sense of time and place, and it makes you feel the mundane horror of small town life where everyone you’ve ever met is inescapable. You can’t make a clean getaway when there’s only one road out of town and it’s lined with familiar faces.
Glass doesn’t separate Lou and Jackie from their surroundings, either. They’re protagonists, not heroines, and their faults and eventual crimes are real, not cutesy. Lou loves Jackie, but she gets her hooked on steroids that plunge her into a kind of Black Swan-esque fantasy of guilt and body horror; Jackie loves Lou, but she lashes out at her when she’s angry. Lou’s sister isn’t the only one in the family to wind up with bruises given to her by a partner she refuses to leave. Lou Sr. isn’t the only one to treat people–especially ones outside his circle–as disposable. While the movie gives its lovers the beginning of a triumphant, romantic escape from their troubles, it immediately kneecaps it in the darkest, funniest way possible. Wherever these two go, there they’ll be–and you’ll probably want to stay away from them.
The plot doesn’t shine as much as its individual scenes do, and that keeps Loves Lies Bleeding from feeling like a truly great comic noir. Its has more ambition than control. But that still leaves it as a strong, vibrant, and messily entertaining crime film with fantastic performances and visuals. It feels steeped in its influences but still the product of a specific, singular vision, and that’s always a selling point for contemporary genre movies. This is well-worth checking out.
Love Lies Bleeding is streaming on Max.