This film explores the body, what is within it, and the physical lengths we will go to in the name of passion, love, and liberation. Blood, sweat, vomit, and saliva are all included. Those who witnessed writer and director Rose Glass’s debut film, Saint Maud, which famously featured the protagonist impaling her own foot with nails, won’t be surprised by the existence of all these fluids. Glass is clearly not a director for the weak of heart, as evidenced by Love Lies Bleeding, a title taken from a particular kind of blood-red flower. However, this time the extreme is grounded in a lesbian romance that will make you swoon.
New Mexico, 1989. Lou, the lonely gym manager (Kristen Stewart), spends her leisure time listening to cassettes about quitting smoking and masturbating. Her sister Beth (Jena Malone), who is regularly beaten by her cowardly husband JJ (Dave Franco), is the sole reason she is still living in this little town. Everything changes the moment Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a square-jawed goddess wearing a leotard and traveling to Vegas for a bodybuilding contest, walks into the gym.
Not only is it wickedly humorous and exhilarating, but it’s also incredibly queer.
The movie deftly subverts hyper-masculine clichés right away and shows no intention of appealing to or entertaining heterosexual viewers. Lou’s perspective is captured on tape as she ogles Jackie’s figure while she works out and injects herself with steroids, savoring the sensuality of an openly gay woman. The two stars have intense chemistry, and their sex scenes are sensual but never exploitative. As Jackie, O’Brian, a real-life bodybuilder, shines, while Stewart, a reserved but kind lesbian attempting to get past her troubled past, appears destined for the role.
Through a dawn over a desert highway, the greasy artificiality of bodybuilding, or the utterly disembodied savagery of the shooting range owned by Lou’s estranged crime boss father, Glass also evidently enjoys the Americana of it all. Played menacingly by Ed Harris with eye-popping hair extensions, Lou Senior is a fabulously wicked villain who teases his daughter into facing the violent potential he knows she possesses.
Without a doubt, this picture is a little disorganized, swinging between body horror, noir, revenge thriller, and pitch-black comedy via magical realism sequences. However, Love Lies Bleeding is full of intense sexuality and an alluring energy, so there’s never a dull moment. Not only is it wickedly humorous and exhilarating, but it’s also incredibly queer. Kristen Stewart, sporting a mullet while engrossed in a book titled “Macho Sluts,” may be the anticipated representation of LGBT women.