Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass, 2024)
Love Lies Bleeding is an exhilarating neo noir thriller, that brings out the best in lead actresses Kristen Stewart and Kate O’Brian as a queer couple trying to survive and keep their love alive.
It’s the second feature by English director Rose Glass, who already made quite a name for herself with the psychological horror movie Saint Maud.
Together with fellow filmmaker Weronika Tofilska, Glass wrote the script for Love Lies Bleeding, which takes place in some forgotten town in New Mexico in the late 1980’s.
Kristen Stewart plays Louise aka Lou, the manager of the local gym, who takes one look at Jackie (O’Brian) and quickly falls in love with her. And why not? Jackie is a bit of a hottie, who occasionally swings both ways, but prefers to be with women. Jackie is also a bodybuilder passing through town on her way to a competition in Las Vegas.
Lou is grounded and in control, because she has to be. Her father (Ed Harris) is the town’s crime boss, who owns the local shooting range, bribes the police and who has never been found out.
Lou also suspects him of killing her mother twelve years ago. And Lou looks after her sister Beth (Jena Malone) who is beaten on the regular by her abusive husband JJ (James Franco).
Jackie, on the other hand, is more impulsive. And not always in control of her emotions, which seems to get worse when she starts to take the steroids that body builders take when they want to grow big quickly. Does she want to grow as big as a superhero, perhaps? It’s an idea the movie certainly seems to toy with.
At some point in the story, Lou tells Jackie she would like to see a particular disgusting person dead, and what happens next sets up the rest of the movie.
Love Lies Bleeding is marketed as ‘Thelma and Louise on steroids’ but to be fair, the movie is a little less lighthearted than that. If Lou and Jackie manage to survive at all, they will have to live with some morally dubious decisions.
Love Lies Bleeding is a dark beast of a movie, that lets its main characters run wild in a way you frankly you don’t see everyday in something approaching a mainstream movie.
It’s not for the faint of heart, its violence feels very real and Glass seems to take inspiration from an older generation of filmmakers like William Friedkin, Walter Hill, Martin Scorsese, or even The Coen Brothers, driving home her powerful story with a menacing aplomb.
At times its dizzying visual style, with lots of low angle shots, seems a metaphor for its main characters search (or lust) for power, even if it just means being in control of their own destiny.
The acting is across the board strong, the score by Clint Mansell echoes eighties-icons like Giorgio Moroder and the cinematography by Ben Fordesman is downright excellent. A lot of scenes take place at night, which greatly adds to the movie as a visceral experience.
Love lies bleeding isn’t perfect. Its first half being a little bit better and original than it’s somewhat more generic second half. But a four star movie is not the enemy of a five star movie and Love lies bleeding is still a very strong genre entry.
Note: Love Lies Bleeding had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and it’s European premiere at the Berlinale. It is out now theatrically in the US and Canada and will soon start its rollout in other international territories.