“Love Lies Bleeding” (2024) is set in November 1989 in a sordid, decaying small town in New Mexico that borders on the edge of some majestic vistas with a star filled sky above. Lou (Kristen Stewart) works at Crater’s Gym, a utilitarian place filled with sweaty, hairy bodies. Jackie (Katy O’Brian) stands out in a town filled with denizens who look like they are decomposing from the inside and is unaware that she is crossing paths with people who have deep connections to each other. On her way to Las Vegas, Jackie starts working for Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), the owner of an outdoor gun range and restaurant, then heads to the gym in her off hours to train. Lou can’t help but notice the exuberant body builder, and the sexual attraction is instant, but their happiness is short-lived when Lou refuses to go to Las Vegas, and the two learn more about their pasts. Soon Jackie is in the deep end of Lou’s dysfunctional family life and risks losing her dream while Lou is trying to figure out how far she is willing to go to protect Jackie.
Lou is one of the most interesting characters that Stewart has ever played, including Princess Diana, Snow White, Savannah Knoop, Bella Swan, and Jean Seaberg. When director and cowriter Rose Glass introduces Lou, she is clearing the clog out of a toilet with her hands. Stewart may be trespassing on Charlize Theron’s “Monster” (2003) territory. She has a stringy mullet, a pale visage and a matter of fact, no bullshit manner of speaking except when speaking to Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), a besotted past hookup whom Lou regrets using and tries to be gentle with. Lou gives the first impression of a woman with a dead-end life who does not have many options or skills to help her escape this dullness, but first impressions are not always accurate.
Vivacious and exuberant Jackie is bursting with life. Even in this era, she is not the typical woman. She has a wide-eyed, bright openness in her approach to a world that seems like a parade of red flags. Confident in her strength, the ripped, muscle-bound woman mistakes physical strength as sufficient protection against the world’s nastier elements and feels strong enough to achieve her greatest goal: winning the USFCB Championships. For people familiar with O’Brian’s work on television series like “Black Lightning” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” or movies like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (2023), she will be unrecognizable because she usually plays stern, no nonsense women with every hair in place and clipped, but I am so proud of her for coming so far in her career to play against type. She was always interesting to watch, but now she gets a chance to show her versatility.
Both women are surprised that their sexual attraction is transforming into something deeper which will make them both act uncharacteristically and put them in the crosshairs of Lou Sr., who looks like the Crypt Keeper before he got the hosting gig on “Tales from the Crypt” and somehow more frightening. Harris is a master of wordlessly conveying menace as he silently assesses a room and immediately understands the score and how to handle it. He wants a relationship with his daughters, which is not what’s best for them. While he did not start the chain of events that puts a wedge between the lovers, he sets the stage long before they knew of each other’s existence and does not mind any happenstance that will further ensure that Lou never strays too far from him.
Director and cowriter Rose Glass is such a confident storyteller, especially if “Love Lies Bleeding” gets compared to Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s “Drive-Away Dolls” (2024), which may not be fair, but they are contemporaries, and it is not often that lesbian characters take center stage in films with wide distribution. Both films are highly stylized, but even in its most surreal moments, Glass’ film feels lived in and more realistic, especially when it comes to sex, which is essential, but not the main driving factor of the narrative. Even though this movie is only Glass’s second feature, her storytelling techniques are so confident that it is impossible not to get caught up in the story.
“Love Lies Bleeding” is the 21st century “True Romance” (1993) with a surrealistic streak. It is a gruesome, hilarious, and erotic roller coast ride that genuinely surprises even with a plethora of trailers that reveal too many of the movie’s best moments. The entire audience reacted audibly with unexpected laughter, including yours truly. Glass alternates between a red-toned past and an unflatteringly lit present, which is a perfect visual signifier to separate the time periods except in one scene where Lou Sr. stands at a Coca-Cola machine with his daughter. The vending machine’s red light portends how Lou’s flashbacks are beginning to materialize in that instant and affect her future. Glass’ depiction of violence and the sheer meatiness of bodies is unflinching. Because Glass prefers to keep the camera moving and has a rapid paced, layered editing style, it was frustrating to rarely get a chance to look at Jackie in one sustained shot where her whole body filled the frame as opposed to fragments.
All great art falls into at least one of four categories: Eden, the Fall, Heaven, and Hell. This period piece is the Fall with nature as the only respite to a town on a downward decline. Glass opens with the camera looking up in the dark at a rock formation then pans up to a sky resplendent with stars, including a shooting one. In contrast, when the camera pans down, it lands in the town to reveal the gym’s exterior, which feels as if it is worlds away, but the story’s pivotal turning point reveals the connection between Lou’s flashbacks and the relationship between these two locations.
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These people use nature’s wonders as a garbage dump. I applaud “Love Lies Bleeding” for creating a character who does not have a prose dump about how she was a bad character, but she is not anymore. Part of the punchline is how love has made Lou more like her father, a brutal killer. It is a terrific twist to have Lou be the murderer in the flashbacks. While Jackie is horrified at becoming a merciless murderer, she is unaware that Lou is commiserating from experience and is not just trading in empty words. Lou’s time at the gym is a kind of penance. Lou seems like an unlikely killer, but it is also retroactively obvious in the way that she is not afraid to get her hands dirty. She is overwhelmed by the circumstance, but also shocked at her ability to turn her reptile brain back on. Kudos for finally depicting a circumstance when choosing not to kill the bad guy was credibly worse than ending his life instead of feeling like a cop out.
Jackie had multiple motivations for killing JJ (Dave Franco): roid rage, to prove to Lou that she had no feelings for him, and to help Lou feel free to leave the town. It was heartbreaking that her actions so gutted her that she could not perform when she got her big break. Also Glass delivers the best show don’t tell sequence by showing how other contestants have people to support them, and Jackie is all alone with her thoughts. The sound distortions-slowing down, speeding up, silence, etc., signifies disassociation.
The film has one flaw. How did Jackie know where JJ lives to kill him? I’ll forgive this cinematic sin because the cat Happy Meal (Queso the Cat) lives. When Jackie does not just say no to drugs, I knew that it was her downfall; however, I never expected that she would transform into She-Hulk, which was significant on multiple levels as her physical transformation symbolized arousal, rage, etc! You would not like her when she is angry! “Love Lies Bleeding” showed a lot of restraint in the scene where she holds the father down and thought that it would go in an entirely different direction…..If I left with a lingering question, do steroids have the hallucinogenic effects as depicted in the film complete with highs and crashing?
Even though Jackie is a supporting character, and “Love Lies Bleeding” does not offer a lot of explicit background, she feels like a complete, three-dimensional character. She is a multiracial, bisexual adoptee who defies gender norms by embracing a predominantly masculine body image and engaging in masculine activities, but her demeanor and appearance adhere to feminine norms. It is the 80s so a lot of these concepts did not exist in the mainstream world. When people discuss her as if she was a freak, a monster, it would have been the prevailing assessment based on the beauty standard of that era and a harsh condemnation based on erroneous beliefs that sexuality is a lifestyle choice. Also there is more information about adoptees’ issues, especially in transracial scenarios. This movie can work today because there are more people now who find Jackie breathtaking like a goddess than repulsive and would not agree with the horrible sentiment against her.
As soon as Jackie arrives in the town, people are eager to consume her. She often dresses like a candy cane in red and white stripes. Lou just happens to be one of the rare ones who want to replenish what she devours. She even bites her toe as if she was on the set of “Bones and All” (2022). While it may just be pure happenstance, it does not feel like an accident that O’Brian, who has Black and white ancestry, resembles Jennifer Beals in this role. I have this vivid memory of hearing someone analyze the cover art for All Saints’ premiere CD and noticed how it centered a black woman whom everyone leans on as if she is a source of energy and support. If Lou did not exist, Jackie would have ended up in a similar predicament. When Lou Sr. shoots at Jackie, and she just accepts the treatment instead of leaving immediately then calling the cops. It was the saddest scene because she does not see it as abuse.
Even with Lou, Jackie is not safe and vulnerable to persecution for her sexuality, specifically being bisexual. A lot of bisexual people face stigma for not picking a side and seen as disloyal and promiscuous. I was surprised at how “Love Lies Bleeding” introduces Jackie, but there was no judgment. Her sexuality carries tension: is she having sex with JJ and Lou because she is enjoying it and/or to get financially secure? JJ and Lou are outraged at Jackie’s choices instead of reflecting on whether their anger was at the fact that they could only have sex with someone that hot if they had financial resources to offer. It is fine that Glass does not explore this issue since it would have detracted from the story’s momentum. It is relevant that Jackie faces more umbrage about her existence and way of surviving than her abusive behavior. The storyline’s sense of outrage over sex work and sexual orientation still works in 1989 and now, which should be alarming, especially since Lou does not see that she may be more like her sister, Beth (Jena Malone), than she would care to admit. They both accept abuse with love.