‘Love Lies Bleeding’ review: All is fair in love and murder
Bella Coco, Staff Writer |
Love Lies Bleeding is an acid-trip dream with love, lust, drugs and blood-covered bodies. But is it the revolutionary sexy, sapphic film A24 has marketed it to be? Be warned: spoilers ahead.
The 80s set film focuses on the story of Lou (Kristen Stewart), a gym manager in New Mexico who seems to be living a life with no direction. Her days are work, eat, smoke, feed her cat, rinse and repeat.
That is until Lou meets Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a dedicated bodybuilder dead set on hitchhiking her way to Las Vegas for a bodybuilding competition. Jackie is as self-deluded as she is built, and Lou falls for every single second of it.
The two kick it off hot and heavy, and while Lou falls head over heels for Jackie, Jackie falls in with Lou’s father (Ed Harris), a drug-smuggler who seems to have his claws in the entirety of New Mexico. With the front of running a gun range, Jackie unknowingly turns her life upside-down when she takes a waitressing job at the range from Lou’s father.
While Love Lies Bleeding seems to advertise itself as an avid western or a neo-noir, the unrelenting theme of 1980s muscle (mullets, cars, shirts) and murder seems to shift the film into a tipped-over realm of fantasy.
With each twist and turn, director Rose Glass cuts no corners with the gritty details. From the queer eroticism to chilling gore and guts of murder, Glass takes no prisoners on this LSD-esque sensation.
Lou and Jackie are graciously given some bliss in the film after their first night together, and everything seems to be relatively—and surprisingly—normal. Before the murder, there is only sex, love and an expected amount of drugs for an ambitious 80s bodybuilder. Lou even takes Jackie to meet her sister, Beth (Jena Malone), and Beth’s abusive husband, JJ (Dave Franco).
Lou and Jackie spend every waking moment in their bed together, and it’s ultimately written for the female gaze. It’s clear Glass takes great care in the specific, sensual performances put on by Stewart and O’Brian, who are also queer actors themselves. The tension is palpable and can be cut with a knife, or, in classic Glass fashion, shot through with a bullet.
All is fine and well until Beth ends up in the hospital inches away from death after being brutally beaten. Despite a lack of confession, all roads lead back to JJ.
Lou takes the yolks out of Jackie’s omelets, and Jackie takes JJ’s head to the corner of his coffee table until his jaw is hanging by threads of muscle and sinew.
Glass’ almost hyperbolic scenes of Jackie’s muscles and sensational growth through her steroid use make it so abundantly clear that a scrawny piece like JJ never stood a chance against a woman who looks like she flew in from Bizarro World.
Love seems to take one step further when Lou finds JJ in his home beaten to a deadly pulp, and Jackie in his bathtub curled up with guilt and disbelief.
Lou does what any sensible dedicated lesbian would do for her lover. Naturally, she helps dispose of the body. The moment Lou starts covering up the murder, the movie moves from zero to 100.
Details start piling up, much like the secrets and methods characters are forced to hold. The lines between good and bad and heroes and villains blur into so many shades of grey that certain actions feel almost justified in the proper context.
Glass puts the term climax into a whole new meaning, with each new buildup outdoing the last. From bloody gunshots to the head to distorted and disturbing hallucinations, Love Lies Bleeding hits and sticks to the ground running until the very end.
With Jackie becoming larger than life and with Lou becoming more like her father, the film ends on an emotional and exhausted note. Like Jackie and Lou, the viewer feels exhausted, but relieved that everything has now come to an end.
