There is unlikely to be a love story this year that's as violent, weird and chaotic as Love Lies Bleeding. Filmmaker Rose Glass has made a work that goes from gently embracing its eccentricities to gleefully crushing them in its big, beefy arms. First making a splash as one of the best films to premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival, it's a journey that is practically bursting at the seams with both desire and death. It's a darkly comic thriller that doubles as a playful deconstruction of how far we'll go for those we love, weaving together pleasure and pain into a portrait of two lovers who get swept up in a beautifully brutal mess.
Set in 1980s New Mexico, the character initially trying to avoid mess in life is Lou. Played by a dynamic yet still deadpan Kristen Stewart, she manages a gym and tries to steer clear of her family. Why? Well, they seem to be involved in some rather illicit operations.
Things get complicated when a new face walks into the gym. Jackie, played by Katy O'Brian (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), is a bodybuilder with a dream to compete at a big upcoming event in Las Vegas. Sparks fly between the two once Lou closes up for the night and, following some sensual steroid-injecting, they're soon living together. However, Jackie is unwittingly working for Lou's cruel father, played by Ed Harris in rare bug-eating form, leading to a rather jaw-dropping fatal encounter.
The film then becomes about our two troubled lovers trying to find a way free from this world of violence, only to keep getting pulled deeper into it. While not as intense as her previous feature Saint Maud, Glass (who co-wrote this new script with Weronika Tofilska) remains interested in exploring obsession and continues to show she has a real eye for capturing the darkness at its core. What makes Love Lies Bleeding unique is how it finds more sly absurdity in how it does so. Whether it is in the many visual flourishes that flirt with something closer to magical realism before diving right in or some wonderfully understated line deliveries from Stewart as things spiral out of control, the film is all about pumping everything up until you can see every vein.
The escalations even pit Lou and Jackie against each other at one point. These scenes play out in bloody yet ridiculous fashion, making their eventual reconciliation that much more humorous. It is also at this point that Glass goes for a big swing to end all big swings. Taking a hammer to the already rather tenuous reality of the film, it is a conclusion that towers over everything before it. The way it is all shot and executed is nothing short of thrilling as it tosses any reservations that were left completely out the window. How literal it is meant to be taken matters less than just how audacious and anarchic of a moment it is.
Rather than lose you, it is a final big breath of fresh air in a film that is never lacking for it. The subsequent exhale then provides one more dark joke to close. The final sequence of shots is simple yet still so silly that you can't help but smile one more time as the couple makes their way out into the world. Be it Jackie with her increasingly big heart or Lou with her undying willingness to navigate mess, they are a duo for the ages. They're flawed and chaotic characters but ones you, perhaps in spite of yourself, somehow end up falling in love with just as they do with each other.
In Love Lies Bleeding, there isn't the so-called "bury your gays" trope where queer characters are cast aside as soon as they start to be too complicated or weird. Instead, it's these weird gays who may just bury you.
LOVE LIES BLEEDING
