Directed by Rose Glass. Written by Weronika Tofilska
Back in the 40s, we used to have films that liked to get messy with it. Its characters were far from perfect, a lot of them were actually kind of scummy. They did bad things, often to other bad people, and their motivations were typically just a shade outside what regular folks might consider relatable. Whirlwind love affairs, egotism, greed, or just downright sociopathy. Noirs like this were sticky and didn’t mind rubbing up against you.
We’ve become a little touch-averse since. We keep our good separate from our bad. Purposes are clear, and they ring true to us, lest we should judge. Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass’s movie about two women whose love for each other inspires a tidal wave of gory violence, is a throwback in this regard.
Bullets fly, brains are bashed in, lovers are scorned, spouses beat, and manipulation abound. Everyone’s a viper in the desert of the desperate, and cooler heads do not prevail.
It’s a movie driven by obsessions. For Jackie, a drifter rolling through a nondescript New Mexico town on her way to a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas, her body is that obsession. She’ll do anything to reveal the power her body’s capable of. For Lou, dissatisfied menial worker at the gym Jackie steps into one night, the ensuing love affair sees her go to any length for her lover.
Love Lies Bleeding likes its sound. Whether it’s the groan of rippling muscles, the squelch of a finger going into a bullet wound, or a cat lapping up leftovers, the sound design wants to make you squirm. Visually, there’s a similar intensity, but where its sound is engineered for disgust, its pictures are meant to bewitch like a twisted nightmare. Glass also loves a montage, and most character development happens with some charged shots set to a thumping 80s soundtrack.
As Lou, Kristen Stewart provides a haunted resilience even if Lou’s backstory takes a little suspension of disbelief to work, but Katy O’Brien is the real show as Jackie, an electrifying wild card. It’s a firecracker of a performance, and they have some definite chemistry between them. As a ruthless gun runner who makes things go sour for our lovers, Ed Harris is splendid as well, shedding his humanity while donning an absolutely depraved wig.
The enthusiastic use of montages early on means it doesn’t take long to tell you all you need to know about these characters, and Glass takes that as a hall pass, never coming back around for more, and any opportunity for character development that follows is treated like a plot twist rather than a deepening.
It stays shallow on the whole, and as it relies on power rather than stamina, it stretches thin across the middle. It holds on to ultimately tell a story that starts and finishes strong. Don’t walk into Love Lies Bleeding expecting devastating drama, but a pulpy flick full of shocking gore, grunts, lust, kitsch and dastardly behavior. This it delivers. It’s wacky, visceral, and very low-brow until it erupts into violence like a cornered lap dog.
Mikkel Frederiksen 