Love Lies Bleeding [Review]
Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding is a wild musclebound erotic crime thrill ride.
Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian. Credit: Anna Kooris / A24
With Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass (Saint Maud) has directed one of the best crime films I’ve seen in a long while. Even though it’s only March, I’m comfortable saying this A24 release is one of the best movies of the year.
It’s 1989. Lou (Kristen Stewart) manages a gym in a small New Mexico desert town. She meets Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a bodybuilder from Oklahoma passing through on her way to a competition in Las Vegas that she dreams of winning. The two fall madly in love, but things quickly spiral out of control as they get tangled in events involving Lou’s dysfunctional family that endanger her father’s (Ed Harris) criminal empire. Guns and muscle, sex and murder, love and revenge, blood and drugs—Love Lies Bleeding has it all.
Kristen Stewart. Credit: Anna Kooris / A24
Rose Glass’ film is dripping with gorgeous, gritty neo-noir style. Night time exteriors are shadowy, bathed in green or yellow light, or red like the gym’s neon sign. That red neon saturates the film’s opening shot, and tints a menacing recurring flashback. Overhead light sources mix with the glow of car headlights bouncing off the road. The movie’s color grading extends the feeling from night time to daytime. DP Ben Fordesman’s images are rich and beautiful.
Locations are dingy, filthy, and lived in. When we first meet Lou, she’s elbow deep in a disgusting toilet in the gym’s bathroom, unclogging it by hand. Later, violence is accompanied by copious amounts of blood that paint characters and locations. Sweat, grime, and blood give texture to the films world.
Katy O’Brian. Credit: Anna Kooris / A24
The raw realism of the setting is blended with almost surreal extreme close-ups on details, most memorably Jackie’s muscles as she’s flexing, accompanied with visceral sound design that makes it sound like you can hear her muscles tearing and growing in real time. Later in the film, Glass adds more surreal flair by using jarring editing and striking camera angles to reflect Jackie’s angry, manic, and paranoid mind when she’s raging out on steroids, and later through Jackie’s hallucinatory dream sequences. A memorable climactic scene near the end of the film is the cherry on top.
Everyone in Love Lies Bleeding is great. Katy O’Brian is a real stand out; I hope to see her in more movies soon. She and Kristen Stewart have sizzling chemistry that makes this erotic thriller work and anchors the romance at the heart of the film. Ed Harris’ Lou Sr., a balding, long-haired, insect obsessed crime lord, is a menacing and frightening noir villain. Dave Franco’s turn as Lou’s mulleted scumbag brother-in-law is great, and you won’t soon forget his final scene. Anna Baryshnikov plays Daisy, a trashy, cracked out woman with a crush on Kristen Stewart’s Lou, and together they share some of the film’s funniest moments. The cast expertly plays up the film’s wicked, dark sense of humor.
Ed Harris. Credit: Anna Kooris / A24
Clint Mansell’s score and the soundtrack propulsively move the picture forward and fit the film’s tone perfectly. I’m a big fan of the synth sound; I’ll be searching for everything in the movie’s extensive track list on Spotify.
Rose Glass’ pulpy, erotic, and bloody Love Lies Bleeding has instantly become a neo-noir classic for me, setting the bar for the next decade like Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler did in 2014 and Michael Mann’s Collateral did in 2004. Don’t miss a chance to see it on the big screen with an audience.
Love Lies Bleeding is in theaters now and goes into wide release on March 15.
