Love Lies Bleeding feels like something I might have stumbled across on late-night television in the 1980s. Scratch that—it’s like something Quentin Tarantino might have stumbled across on late-night television in the 1980s. Set in the American Southwest some time during that decade, the movie stars Kristen Stewart as Lou, the scruffy manager of a scuzzy gym where steroids flow freely and the walls are adorned with signs like, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” Lou’s lonely world bursts open one day with the arrival of Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a statuesque female bodybuilder on her way to a competition in Las Vegas. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actor communicate hunger with their eyes the way Stewart does here.) The two fall into a feral affair, which gets complicated by Lou’s criminally dysfunctional family (including Ed Harris as Lou’s father, looking like a sasquatch who had a bad run-in with a ceiling fan). Directed by Rose Glass, Love Lies Bleeding unfolds like a fever dream of id, with insert shots of guns, egg yolks, and O’Brian’s bursting muscles competing for attention under a red fluorescent glare. The two leads are riveting, partly because you’re never quite certain which one is more dangerous to the other. (Stewart and O’Brian don’t have chemistry, they have combustibility.) Glass, whose Saint Maud was an especially unnerving exercise in religious horror, piles on the grisly violence and unsettling imagery—especially after Jackie overdoes it on the steroids and strange visions ensue. Mileage may vary on those elements—as well as a wild visual swing the movie takes during its climax—but there’s no denying that Love Lives Bleeding has a grimy verve all its own. It’s a nightmare metaphor for hard how some people have to fight for love, especially when it’s not approved of.
(3/10/2024)
