Erin Maxwell
Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding is a fascinating, hallucinatory fever dream set in the American Southwest that utilizes elements of body horror, crime noir, and occasional magical realism to sell its unique love story. Offbeat in all the ways we’ve come to expect from an A24 offering, the superb performances and sharp script allow the feature to really flourish beyond its quirky premise.
Much like Glass’s feature film debut effort Saint Maud, Love Lies Bleeding places its focus on nonconformists and outsiders who live on the fringe of society. Bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian) has molded herself into a living being of physical perfection as a means of escape from her life in Oklahoma. She is on her way to a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas when fate intervenes and brings her to Lou (Kristen Stewart), a mulleted gym manager in Albuquerque with serious family issues. The two immediately spark, but their passion not only sets each other aflame, but the fiery duo soon find themselves at the center of one combustible situation after another.
The performances in the film help sell even the most peculiar moments of the vigorous drama. Stewart and O’Brian share an intense chemistry that perfectly captures the blinding lust of a new relationship, the type of white heat that radiates from young love. Ed Harris and his long, flowing locks of hair extensions plays the film’s heavy, Lou’s father and Jackie’s boss, a big wig in the Land of the Enchantment whose illegal activity has bought him almost every local business and law enforcement official. And Jena Malone and Dave Franco round out the cast as Lou’s obsequious sister Beth and her scumbag abusive husband, JJ.
Written by Glass and Weronika Tofilska, Love Lies Bleeding is an extremely well-balanced, occasionally darkly humorous, uber-violent portrait of love gone very, very wrong. A story of two misfits who find each other in 1980s Albuquerque made complicated by dysfunctional families and occasional roid rage is a bit of irresistible storytelling that is hard to turn away from, even at its goriest. A period piece cram packed with more acid-washed denim and complicated haircuts than a back issue of Tiger Beat, even the over-the-top style of the film can’t compete with the top-notch performances and story as it unfolds. Glass creates a world of her own in which to cradle the relationship of Jackie and Lou.
A love story that would make Diane Arbus smile, Love Lies Bleeding is a visceral work that holds no punches as it fuses the real with the surreal. Performances from Stewart and O’Brian encapsulate raw emotion while Glass and Tofilska’s script manages to merge elements of neo-noir crime thriller and the WTF psychological horror we’ve come to expect from A24 films. The end product is an eccentric outing that exudes style, substance, and promise from its creator Glass.
(To be honest, Love Lies Bleeding is best consumed when going in as blind as possible. Sorry that wasn’t mentioned first.)
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