Kristen Stewart’s character Lou, the gym manager, enters the frame in a rather unconventional way with her hand in the toilet. The film is brutish as well in the sense that it contains violence, sex, and love and is directed by Rose Glass who we saw earlier this year in ‘Permission Man’ with ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ ‘K Animsy’. For a film about a steroid-fueled bodybuilder that is itself on steroids, that’s pretty much the definition of a ‘gut punch’. The film somehow becomes more aggressive from each subsequent turn. A few of the overly ambitious punches didn’t really land as well as they could have, particularly in the final act, but it is not a great criticism given that the film shows that incontrovertibly rather Glass is a talent to reckon with.
He lives somewhere in the sticks that the American Dream failed to reach. Lou is a young boy in 1989, at the tail end of an era of filmic muscle-bound heroes, when Richard Glass is depicting a town in New Mexico that is essentially a trap for those who set foot in it, only cycles of violence become the way out. Lou has a sister though, and a father who is literally named Lou Sr. (also wonderfully malevolent Ed Harris) and who just so happens to also be the most powerful drug lord in the entire town. He also possesses a gun range which he seems to be using to smuggle guns across the border to avoid the law — alongside disposing of some rivals in a nearby ravine — perhaps even Lou’s mother. Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone) tries as much as possible to keep her head low as she bears the brunt of abuse from her good-for-nothing spouse JJ (awkwardly a mullet-wearing Dave Franco) but this is just business as usual for the Franco crew. In sharp contrast to what Lou knows, a beautiful woman called Jackie (Katy O’Brian) walks into the picture, captivating him — a bodybuilder on a trip to Las Vegas for a competition, who only stays in town for a short time. They end up loving each other while skimming periods of recovery between their excessive steroid use and other sorts of exercise that include weight lifting.
“Love Lies Bleeding” starts off as a hostage drama in which Jackie becomes the agent turned villain for reasons not clearly understood but images that can scar forever. Jackie is infamously described today as a mix between Frankenstein and the Joker. Her and Lou’s relationship has been driven to the most violent extremes, and the new directions it takes once they reach it are sometimes really powerful. Lovecraftian horror is probably what best describes those “new directions”, but there are shades of other films in it as well. It’s been said that there’s something similar to Sue Rogers in “Drive” There’s plenty of resemblance too with Lee Clarke from Red Rock West and even with characters from great westerns who seem to have been forgotten. All the characters in Love Really Lies Bleeding seem to possess something special and distinct that only increases the depth of the screenplay.
Part of that comes from the fact that Rose Glass hasn’t made an ordinary contemporary noir. Rather, hers is a film that, rather than be beholden to the archetype of the femme fatale, seeks to push in another, more grotesque and chaotic, steroid-influenced direction. I do believe that certain narrative excesses in the final episode will be simply too much for some audiences and yes, Jackie’s character, although O’Brian is a great discovery, is sometimes rather overwhelmed by the fog of her narrative role: the character that is supposed to be playing the role of someone bolder than her. This significant encouragement is a danger to be stylized, Refn-esque, as the film steadily approaches territory that allows it to be described as overdone but never quite crosses that boundary. It is no surprise that aiming at the very heavy subtext and almost epic stakes of the film, she does not lose the file of the film looking dirty, sweaty, and gritty. (For this, the brilliant score of Clint Mansell deserves special praise.)
It’s crucial that Lou’s character doesn’t become a casualty in the plot. Stewart portrays a character whose inward vulnerability is juxtaposed against an outward attitude of bravado very well. She is the cleaner which, by the way, I endorse “Love Lies Bleeding” for the fact that it shows the practical consequences of violent actions that need to be attended to by someone. Excellent work from the actors.
As with the previous film “Saint Maud”, Love Lies Bleeding is the love of the subject matter. This debut was so spectacular because it was the love of faith and religion. This one is love of all things that are perceived as powerful, mostly muscles and guns. Glass introduces her characters as having particular desires: Jackie wants to be victorious, Lou desires Jackie, Dad craves power… and then she throws them at each other in dramatic and wholly absurd narrative developments. What makes it even better is how much chaos there is, but Glass remains in complete control of the story. These characters make out as if they are about to fly through the ceiling, but Rose Glass is so calm.
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