A drifting bodybuilder and a reclusive gym employee fall hard for each other with devastating consequences in Rose Glass's explosive thriller.
At the climax of David Fincher’s Gone Girl, in a confrontation with her husband long after her carefully constructed mask has peeled off, Amy Dunne utters the immortal line “I’ve killed for you. Who else can say that?” The same sentiment runs through Rose Glass and Weronika Tofilska’s lead-filled Love Lies Bleeding, about the lengths two women are willing to go to in a heady, delusional quest to prove their devotion. Through a sheen of sweat, blood and steroids, the intoxicating, all-consuming impact of Lou (Kristen Stewart) and Jackie’s (Katy O’Brian) whirlwind romance will have lasting consequences on the New Mexico town where Lou’s bug-obsessed gun-running father (Ed Harris) rules with an iron fist.
If her feature debut Saint Maud was an austere slow-burn, Glass’s second feature is a Molotov cocktail: hot, dirty, fast, combustible. Orphaned Oklahoman Jackie blows into town on her way to the world bodybuilding championships in Las Vegas – she lands a temporary gig waitressing at the gun range operated by Lou Sr and his dirtbag son-in-law JJ (Dave Franco). Her obsessive exercise routine quickly brings her to the attention of Lou Jr, who spots her pumping iron among the gym rats who populate the space she manages. Instantly smitten, Lou offers Jackie some of the steroids favoured by her male customers. “Just to give you that extra kick,” she assures a slightly hesitant Jackie.
That extra kick looks like this: the post-workout burn of lactic acid build-up; omelettes carefully made with just the whites; hot, fast, dirty bathroom sex; the explosive desire to fight back against the violence of misogyny no matter what the cost. Stewart and O’Brian’s chemistry is electric – besotted with each other almost instantly, their love burns like magnesium, incandescent and dangerous. Soon enough Jackie can’t bear to see Lou cowed under the boot of her monstrous brother-in-law and father anymore. Juiced up and whited out, she takes matters into her own hands – and that’s when the body count starts to rise.
With a pounding Clint Mansell score and Ben Fordesman’s saturated, luscious cinematography, Love Lies Bleeding embraces the pulpy spirit of its 1989 small-town America setting. While the Berlin Wall tumbles on the television, there’s a growing sense that Jackie and Lou’s love could have a similarly earth-shattering power. If you go in for easy comparisons, it’s Thelma & Louise by way of The Outsiders and Blood Simple channelling Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the lesbian relationship which is the literal and metaphorical heart of the film puts Love Lies Bleeding in a class of its own, unapologetically and explicitly queer in a way that feels liberating and tantalising.
Considering how radically different Love Lies Bleeding is from Saint Maud, Glass already appears chameleonic and uncompromising in her filmmaking vision. Frenetic and obsessive, this is still a love story amid the gore and slick of body oil – a heart-pounding, iron-pumping descent into the heady heart of obsession and desire.
Published 18 Feb 2024
By Anton Bitel
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