To watch Love Lies Bleeding is to watch one of its leads, Katy O’Brian, become a superstar in real time. She shares the screen with the always electric Kristen Stewart, as well as the legendary Ed Harris (here looking almost literally like a monster), and steals every scene from both. Be it her bodybuilder’s physique, expressive face, or her extraordinary ability to go from victim to violent at the flip of a switch, hers is the type of performance that can carry a movie. Yet carry it she does not. The entire cast, which also includes Dave “Mike Pancake” Franco and the always excellent Jena Malone, is tapped into something big, as are the filmmakers. From the brutal, terrifying script by Rose Glass and Weronika Tofilska, to the assured and dynamic direction from the former, Love Lies Bleeding is exactly the type of grimy, disturbing, and oddly sweet thriller that we haven’t seen since the release of Titane in 2021.
The title of the film is Love Lies Bleeding, but a good alternate title would be Love, Lies, Bleeding because the film features a wealth of all three items. Kristen Stewart plays Lou, a relatively quiet young woman with a cat and a job managing a gym. It’s no Planet Fitness either. This is essentially a glorified weight room, packed to its mirrored walls with big muscles, tiny dicks, and fannypacks filled to bursting with contraband steroids. Lou’s estranged father (Ed Harris) owns not just the gym, but the local firing range. The two don’t often speak, and when they do it’s usually in reference to Lou’s sister (Jena Malone) and her sketchy, mulleted, abusive husband (Dave “Mike Pancake” Franco). Lou’s life is hardly a life at all, but things change when Jackie (Katy O’Brian) a drifter with her sights on a Las Vegas bodybuilding competition, struts into the gym for a pump. A coy conversation over a bummed cigarette soon blossoms into a steamy romance, and before long Jackie gets…heavily involved with Lou’s family troubles. It gets violent. Very violent.
That’s all I’m willing to say plot-wise, as one of the film’s distinct pleasures is the way it regularly redefines itself, often in shocking ways. This chameleonic sensibility is what allows Glass to have a lot of fun with tone, which lends a real-life feel to a film that has many extreme, and occasionally surreal elements. The temptation is to call the film “Coen Brothers by way of David Lynch,” but the more accurate way to describe it is “a Rose Glass film.” Much like her previous film, the deeply upsetting Saint Maud, Love Lies Bleeding is not interested in providing comfort for its audience, nor is it trying to judge its characters. What happens is what happens and why it happens is because humans are complicated, messy, petty creatures that often act before thinking.
The film is set in the ‘80s (I’m not sure where, but my guess is Arizona? I may have missed it), and the costumes and soundtrack do beautiful work in capturing a time period that isn’t so much denoted by the nostalgic neons that so many throwback stories utilize, but rather by a considerably less stlyized and more historically accurate design. It looks like it occurs in the ‘80s much more than it looks like it was made by someone born in the ‘80s. In that way it’s kind of refreshing (although I am still very much a fan of the more heightened ‘80s branding where everything looks like an abandoned Spencer’s gifts). If memory serves, a date is never explicitly stated, but the setting comes through nonetheless quite strongly. Composer Clint Mansell finds a perfect middle ground between the synth sounds of the era and the post-Drive vaporwave aesthetic that is so popular now.
The setting is helped into creation through exceptional cinematography by Ben Fordesman (Out of Darkness). One shot sticks out in the mind: an exterior of Lou’s workplace. The night sky is littered with twinkling stars, which are barely dimmed by the glow emanating from the lights of the gym, which here looks seems like a warehouse but for the clanking of weights coming across the wind (I swear you can feel the wind — and it’s humid, gross). It’s a gorgeous establishing shot that drips with cozy vibes, even though we know that this small town far from cozy.
In the film’s back half, Glass takes some big stylistic swings that may prove confusing or disorienting for some, but if you’re tapped into its wavelength these flourishes will only serve to secure what we already know: Love Lies Bleeding is astonishingly original and thrilling in ways that cannot be captured in a trailer (or a review, if I’m being honest). It’s a calling card for a litany of talents both in front of and behind the camera, and it’s a huge line in the sand daring those who aren’t into formally audacious cinema to step across and get knocked around a bit. And if the universe is a kinder place than Love Loes Bleeding seems to believe, then Katy O’Brian is going to become a household name, effective across many genres. I want to see her karate fight a bunch of dudes. Please, Hollywood, grant me this wish.
Directed by Rose Glass
Written by Rose Glass, Weronika Tofilska
Starring Anna Baryshnikov, Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Dave “Mike Pancake” Franco
Rated R, 104 minutes
