“Love Lies Bleeding” Review
Katy O’Brian (Left) and Kristen Stewart play lovers caught in a crime-fueled world in “Love Lies Bleeding”, the second film from Rose Glass.
I say you need to watch movies in theaters quite a bit (because it’s the damn truth) but that distinction is especially apt for “Love Lies Bleeding”. Watching this latest offering from A24 in a packed theater was phenomenal. With “Love Lies Bleeding”, it feels like writer/director Rose Glass wanted to make a crazy midnight movie with a bigger budget. She certainly succeeded as “Love Lies Bleeding” is a remarkably intense, thrilling, romantic and exciting venture that I think will turn more people onto the wild arthouse scene that A24 has been trying to push into the mainstream.
In 1989, a bodybuilding woman named Jackie (Katy O’Brian) moves into a desert town to train for a Las Vegas bodybuilding competition when she meets Lou (Kristen Stewart), the manager of a local gym. When the two start dating, things are complicated when Jackie gets a job working at the shooting range of Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), Lou’s father and the mastermind of a gun smuggling operation. With numerous obstacles trying to violently tear them apart, Lou and Jackie must resort to extreme measures to keep their new love alive.
At the heart of this film are two incredible performances from Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian who ground the story with their intense and believable relationship. Their chemistry is so engaging and the passion they have for each other is what makes “Love Lies Bleeding” emotionally resonant. As a former bodybuilder, O’Brian certainly injects realism into her performance as Jackie with a remarkable physical transformation to match. It’s good to see O’Brian move into more independent films after gaining solid recognition for her roles in “The Mandalorian” and “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania”. Stewart also does a great job in the film, embodying a complicated persona of someone who’s done things that they regret and now they want to move forward with a sense of normalcy.
While the film is set in the late-80s and has the neon energy that permeates the stereotypes of the decade (as well as plenty of A24 films the more I think about it), there’s this seediness to the whole thing. It’s like if “GLOW” and “No Country for Old Men” had a bastard child. The grime of “Love Lies Bleeding” perfectly shows this dirty world that Lou and Jackie are trying to escape from but find themselves wrapped up in.
As the film’s villain, Ed Harris is the disgusting side of this film personified with a visually off-putting look and a creepy, soft-spoken manner. He doesn’t have to yell or be that violent to convince you that he’s capable of unspeakable acts of terror. The entire film’s approach to violence is like that. It’s often brief but devastatingly effective to the point where certain acts in the film were met with audible gasps from the audience.
One thing I wasn’t quite expecting was for how darkly comical the film could get. Anna Baryshnikov in particular is so delightfully irritating as an obsessive ex-girlfriend of Lou’s with almost every interaction she has with Kristen Stewart getting a laugh. Combined with a surreal touch, Rose Glass and Weronika Tofilska’s script is a gold-mine of excellent lines and ideas made manifest by a passionate production that makes for an excellent sophomore film from Glass following her deeply disturbing debut “Saint Maud”.
The entire film is energized with the right balance of character growth (literally in O’Brian’s case since Jackie becomes a user of steroids) and action, but it’s in the final act where things get strange. The way “Love Lies Bleeding” is so crazy that it absolutely warrants seeing it with an audience. Not only was I pleased with the chances that it took but I also loved hearing other people’s reactions to the kind of mad fun that A24 and the talented filmmakers the studio seeks out are capable of.
“Love Lies Bleeding” is a thrilling whirlwind romance that takes the idea of strong women in film to a whole new level in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Whether you’re looking for a touching relationship or just a tense thriller chock full of violence and grit, I think this bizarre outing is worth it if you’re in the mood for something different.
