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| Director Rose Glass |
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| Glass with Kristen Stewart |
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| Katie O'Brian, Glass, and Stewart |
LOVE LIES BLEEDING B- Great Britain USA (104 mi) 2024 ‘Scope d: Rose Glass
This is like a Marvel comic B-movie that flaunts its neo-noir mentality, a throwback to a golden age of 90’s dark psychological crime thrillers with sex and violence at the heart of its beating pulse, like Ridley Scott’s THELMA AND LOUISE (1991), Carl Franklin’s One False Move (1992), the Wachowski sister’s lesbian romance Bound (1996), and perhaps most especially David Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY (1997), a dreamlike action thriller with surreal vibes that this occasionally resembles, right down to the lines of the highway passing in the dark, and while it thrives on a seething realism of gun culture that can be brutal, with plenty of sinister, repressed impulses of sexual obsession and revenge, the kicker is it ventures into the surreal and fantastical at the end, which is likely to polarize viewers. Glass initially studied film and video at the London College of Communication where she worked as a runner on film sets for music videos and commercials, and was then accepted at the National Film and Television School, with notable alumni Lynne Ramsay and Terrence Davies, graduating in 2014, heavily influenced by David Lynch, Darren Aronofsky, and David Cronenberg, where she was selected by Bong Joon-Ho as one of his 20 directors to watch for in the 2020’s in BFI Sight and Sound, Bong Joon Ho's 20 upcoming directors for the 2020s - BFI. Teaming up with producers Oliver Kassman and Andrea Cornwell, co-writing with former NFTS grad Weronika Tofilska, this film is set in an early 1990’s Southwestern setting, shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico by Ben Fordesman, who also shot the director’s initial feature SAINT MAUD (2019), a British horror film that raised plenty of eyebrows with its morbid subject matter, but according to Writer/director Rose Glass: “women love messed up stuff.” That could be the underlying theme of this movie, with a pulsating electronic synth-heavy score by Clint Mansell, known for his collaboration with Aronofsky, as the camera zooms in on a seedy gym in the middle of nowhere that looks dark and depressing, expressing the unrelenting dreariness of these dead-end lives, with suggestions of a little girl on girl action, with the clingy, flirtatious airhead Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov, Mikhail’s daughter) coming on strong to the reclusive gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart, who keeps finding these quirky roles that she completely inhabits, apparently informing the director, “Who the hell else is going to play this role?”), who seems more concerned with the grim realities of the job, most of which are unpleasant, like cleaning the perpetually clogged toilets, Love Lies Bleeding | Official Preview HD | A24 YouTube (4:50). Immediately we’re reeled into this visually striking film aesthetic of small town Americana with foreboding dark undertones that suggest something threatening lies ahead, featuring a terrific sound design, where the ominous mood of horror feels derived from such classics as Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique (Les Diaboliques) (1955), and the neo-noir thrillers of Orson Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL (1958) and the Coen brother’s Blood Simple (1984).
In this small community where not much ever happens, what plays out is like an old-time western as a stranger rolls into town, yet the gender is inverted as the swaggering stranger walking into her gym is a pumped-up young female bodybuilder named Jackie (Katie O’Brian, a martial arts devotee and former professional bodybuilder). The obsessional attraction is instant, with Jackie’s muscular build and sweaty workout routine capturing the eye of Lou, who can’t take her eyes off her, just waiting for a chance to talk to her, closing up early when a guy starts hitting on her, but ends up breaking a up a fight between Jackie and a bulked-up guy who likes pushing people around, but Jackie pushes back, getting openly confrontational before Lou steps in, taking Jackie aside as she closes the joint. Offering her free steroid injections, something illegal to have or distribute without a license, yet readily available from one of the black market distributors, she gives her a shot in the butt, which starts the ball rolling. Before you know it, they’re grabbing at each other on the floor mats before hopping into bed, where Jackie ends up staying with Lou, as she’s just a drifter passing through on her way to Vegas for a bodybuilding tournament, yet it’s love at first sight morphed into each thinking the other is their ticket out of there, but their combustible emotions become a self-destructive nightmare. Weirdness is associated with those continuing injections, as they create a nirvana-like blissful mindset where you feel invincible, something Jackie describes as like Popeye eating a can of spinach, where suddenly her muscles start bulging in a comically exaggerated Hulk-like way, adding an element of the surreal to much of the dreamlike imagery that unfolds in a visual parallel to David Lynch. We discover Lou comes from a dysfunctional family, where her psychopathic father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris with ridiculously long hair extensions), owns the gym and a local shooting range, and appears to be a crime boss, an arms dealer that the FBI is watching very closely, with his own dirty cop on the payroll working for him, Officer Mike (David DeLao), having alienated his daughter to the point she refuses to talk to him, wanting nothing more to do with him, yet they’re quickly brought back together into the same universe, while her sister Beth (Jena Malone) is the punching bag of her abusive husband JJ (Dave Franco), yet refuses to press charges, as she’s under the delusional impression this is love. Lou’s protective closeness to her sister is what’s keeping her there, so when he puts her in the hospital, lying unconscious, her face puffed up and on life support, Lou grows so infuriated with JJ that she really wants to kill him, where that paralyzing rage is transferred to Jackie, who feels compelled to act in ways Lou wouldn’t, and in the process exposes the darker, buried secrets of society where hidden evils are lurking under a façade of normalcy. This is a European director’s unambiguous portrait of an America saturated with guns, marked by bloodshed, and characterized by lawlessness.
Echoing the solitude of characters found in Lynch films, the film goes off the rails a bit, using extreme close-ups, showing love intertwined with violence, unafraid to push the boundaries of body horror, growing ugly and brutally grotesque, exploring deeper themes of identity and metamorphosis, where the imagery alone becomes a metaphor for the underlying cruelty emanating from this family, with visions of a demon-like Lou Sr. bathed in a stark red light motif grinning diabolically, which has the effect of engulfing scenes with an intense and ominous atmosphere. It veers out in multiple directions, with inexplicable murders, betrayals, cover-ups, and tension mounting from all the built-up mayhem associated with things going overwhelmingly wrong, where the plot feels convoluted and the unsympathetic characters are basically unrelatable, despite stellar performances, yet there are moments of wicked humor. Jackie tries to do the right thing, but doesn’t know the family history, or how dangerous it is to swim in the crime-infested waters. All she really wants to do is head to Vegas for the competition, but gets bogged down by this mess, Love Lies Bleeding Exclusive Movie Clip - More Powerful ... YouTube (1:26). As if in response, she starts injecting herself with larger doses, kind of losing her head in the process, growing more wildly out of control, delving into psychedelic Aronofsky territory, uncovering strange and obscure aspects of human nature. Meanwhile, the more close-to-the-vest Lou finds herself in survival mode, continually having to clean up the messes left behind from her partner’s impulsive behavior, which is well-intentioned, but bonkers, turning this into a kind of mind-fuck of a movie. The bodybuilding tournament goes off as expected, with Jackie showing up to participate, and while she fits right in as one of the stand-outs, it soon becomes clear that things have gone horribly wrong, with sound distortions and an altered mindset, becoming a hallucinogenic, out-of-body experience, complete with quick cutting flashback sequences, where she ends up in jail for assault, but that’s only the beginning of a deranged, nightmarish path of disorientation and confusion, representing an abstract emotional perspective, complete with hidden interpersonal dynamics that suddenly become clear, creating an adrenaline-laced bloodbath that is typically the domain of men in movies. Reminiscent of Amanda Kramer’s deliriously stylized Please Baby Please (2022), a kind of subterranean, neon-lit fever dream, with its gaudy costumes and art direction, billed as a “genderqueer extravaganza,” this gets into the psychological anguish surrounding homophobia, as you tend to internalize all that projected hatred. At different points in the film both Lou and Jackie think they are monsters, having been called that by their own parents, getting inside their heads, bringing past traumas into the present, creating this whirlwind of anxiety and mixed emotions, capturing a sense of the eerie and the foreboding, yet there’s nothing subtle about the audacious conclusion, mixing hard corps realism with heavy doses of fantasy, representing a transformation of love, moving from stylish pulp to camp. Unafraid to wear her influences on her sleeve, becoming both an homage and a distinctly unique piece of cinema, this is not for the faint of heart, with an exaggerated, over-the-top strangeness that is not for everyone, as the film revels in its own graphic violence, with some shocking, gory moments that come out of nowhere, balancing elements of sex, romance, horror, and action sequences, with Glass ensuring the gruesome aspects of the movie are served without overpowering the theme of queer romance and sexual desire, where despite all odds, their lives merge together in an ode to reckless devotion.
The Influences of LOVE LIES BLEEDING YouTube (11:14)
