As soon as reclusive Lou (Kristen Stewart) glimpses statuesque body builder Jackie (Katy O’Brien) from across the gym she manages, we know she’s sunk. The way director Rose Glass allows the camera to absorb this expression of desire, and the sensuous way she lingers on the body, tracing every line of Jackie’s muscular frame, are just some of the many pleasures that run throughout Glass’ wildly entertaining genre mash-up Love Lies Bleeding.
Jackie blows in to the small New Mexican town where Lou has lived her whole life on her way to Las Vegas to participate in an elite body-building competition. When we first see her, she’s using that body to obtain what she needs most at that moment: a job to get her the money she needs for the next leg of her journey. As she strolls across the gun range where she’s hired as a waitress, her manner exudes the same confidence and strength suggested by her figure (it’s a star-making performance from the striking and beguiling O’Brian). When we first meet Lou, on the other hand, she’s unclogging a toilet at the Crater Gym. Stewart— who can act circles around just about everyone in Hollywood at the moment with her off-beat choices, and who was the only person Glass approached for the role— is right at home playing this sort of aloof character. Lou is withdrawn and angry— at her brother-in-law JJ (a slimy Dave Franco) for violently abusing her sister Beth (Jena Malone) and her father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris, who brings just the right weirdly sinister vibe to the part, costuming and all), a crime lord who has the whole town under his thumb— but she’s also resigned to staying put. That is, until she meets and immediately falls for Jackie.
Co-written by two non-Americans (the English Glass and fellow filmmaker Weronika Tofilska), Love Lies Bleeding is set in a version of the American West that is just divorced from reality. This is the West that we see in the movies (as well as the perception outsiders hold of America; just look at all the corny motivational posters papering the walls of Crater Gym, reflecting that almost hilariously stereotypical American idea of the need for constant self-improvement) and that freedom is reflected in the filmmaking, which fluidly moves from sex to violence, romance to neo-noir, sci-fi to thriller, populating every character and their surrounding environment with little quirks: Lou Sr.’s insect hobby, or the enormous crack in the desert floor that serves as a convenient resting place for secrets. But it’s also an inversion of Western iconography. The masculine hero isn’t a man, but a woman. The love story is queer. Law enforcement is useless. The villains are perceived as the town’s guardians, clinging to conservative boxes that neither Lou nor Jackie neatly fit in to. The technical aspects of the production ably enhance this off-kilter mood, from Ben Fordesman’s vibrant cinematography, drawing on such inspirations as Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas and making ample use of available artificial lighting, to the sound design (the melodic clank of the machines in Crater Gym craft the film’s immersive opening montage), to the soundtrack, which largely consists of alternative 80s tunes and electronic music. It should be noted that Love Lies Bleeding is a period piece, set in 1989, and that teetering on the edge of the 90s is reflected in its visual language, which doesn’t succumb to the usual neon-soaked excess that dominates most 80s nostalgia flicks, but is gritty and grimy and sweaty.
People may be wondering how a thriller about American body builders is the next film from Glass, whose first feature was the harrowing 2020 religious horror movie Saint Maud. But the time the film reaches its gleefully surreal finale— an ending that is going to alienate a lot of viewers expecting to be spoon-fed a logical conclusion— it’s clear that Loves Lies Bleeding is a definitely a Rose Glass movie. The transformative power of love is the through-line that runs through all those oddities, and that works both ways. Jackie’s confidence and clear-headedness about her goals rubs off on Lou, who becomes more proactive as incidents escalate. Jackie, meanwhile, starts taking steroids to accelerate her muscular growth, and she becomes increasingly unstable, blinded by love for Lou, easily consumed by jealousy, and quick to resort to violence (yet, her love also becomes her superpower, and I mean that literally). Another twisted love story is represented by Beth, who stands by JJ. “You don’t know love,” Beth at one point says to a visibly stung Lou, Beth’s face beaten to a pulp by her husband. It’s a straightforward statement, but one heavy with the weight of what Love Lies Bleeding is about: the things we do for love.
Love Lies Bleeding is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 104 minutes. Rated R.
Katie at the Movies 