Love Lies Bleeding Review: Blood, Biceps, and Bad Romance

Love Lies Bleeding kicks off when a small-town gym manager named Lou catches eyes with Jackie, a drifter passing through town to train for a Las Vegas bodybuilding competition. Sparks fly between these two women seeking escape from their dead-end lives, but their romance soon spirals into a violent odyssey twisting through the New Mexico desert.

Co-written and directed by Rose Glass, this thriller combines elements of neo-noir, body horror, and queer romance. Glass delivers a visually striking follow-up to her acclaimed directorial debut Saint Maud, teaming up with producer A24 and cinematographer Ben Fordesman.

With her chopped mullet and ever-present cigarettes, Kristen Stewart brings a weary badass energy to the role of Lou. As Jackie, Katy O’Brian makes an eye-catching debut, boldly showing off her character’s extreme bodybuilder physique. Ed Harris, Jena Malone, and Dave Franco round out the cast as Lou’s creepy crime boss father, abused sister, and sleazy brother-in-law.

Love Lies Bleeding premiered to buzz at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where early reviews praised the surreal style, ambitious narrative, and captivating lead performances. Some critics found the plot convoluted or characters unrelatable. But between Stewart’s trademark magnetism and Glass’ singular artistic vision, this psycho-noir Western love child promises to shock, confound, and electrify adventurous audiences.

A Neon Desert Dreamscape

Cinematographer Ben Fordesman gorgeously captures both the grit and the glitz of Love Lies Bleeding’s 1980s New Mexico setting. His camerawork conjures a desert dreamscape that shifts between stark realism and flashes of surreal fantasy.

Much of the film takes place in the small rural town where Lou and her family reside. With its trailer parks, dive bars, and weatherbeaten buildings, the setting oozes backwater desolation. Yet even the bleakest locations take on a lonely, romantic aura under the blanket of stars that Fordesman makes visible in every outdoor scene. His low angles of the vistas and wide-open skies establish the quintessential Western milieu.

At the same time, Fordesman lenses the film through a subtly psychedelic filter. Trippy neon lights and hazy street scenes evoke the excess of 80s aesthetics. The gym where Lou works has a lurid, hellish vibe, with stark red mood lighting and allegedly motivational posters screaming about pain, punishment and glory. During one sex scene, Lou’s cigarette smoke swirls around the entwined bodies like tendrils of fog.

The cinematography also revels in magnifying every ripple and bulge of Jackie’s muscular physique. Extreme closeups chart her metamorphosis on steroids as veins swell, skin stretches, and muscles audibly pop. This voyeuristic focus on her physical transformation lends its own distinctive body horror flavor.

By summoning both the expansive isolation of desert landscapes and the suffocating intensity of dingy interiors, Fordesman’s dynamic yet gritty visual language pulls viewers into Love Lies Bleeding’s bizarre version of small-town America. The results may not always be pretty, but they make for one unforgettable trip.

Leads Who Leave Their Mark

Kristen Stewart once again proves her acting chops as Lou, the weary gym manager longing for escape from her nowhere town. With her tomboyish style, thousand-yard stare, and ever-present cigarettes, Stewart makes Lou the kind of jaded seen-it-all badass audiences love to root for. Yet she also lets Lou’s loneliness and vulnerability show through the tough façade as her protective walls crumble for newcomer Jackie. Stewart navigates Lou’s moral descent into violence with electric intensity.

As Jackie, the aspiring female bodybuilder who bulldozes into Lou’s life, Katy O’Brian makes an eye-catching film debut. She captures both her character’s ambition and naivete while fearlessly embracing the extreme physicality of the role. O’Brian underwent intensive weight training to sculpt her own imposing physique befitting an obsessive athlete. Her commitment pays off in scenes spotlighting every grotesque detail of Jackie’s steroid-fueled muscle growth. Meanwhile, a magnetic chemistry with Stewart fuels the pair’s whirlwind affair.

In supporting roles, Ed Harris oozes menace as Lou’s estranged father, the ruthless small-town crime boss behind the area’s seedy underbelly. With stringy locks and a scorpion-munching habit, his brief but bizarre performance epitomizes the film’s surreal touches. As Lou’s battered sister Beth, Jena Malone is both sympathetic and frustrating in her unwavering loyalty to her abusive mullet-wearing husband JJ. Played by Dave Franco as the ultimate sleazy redneck creep, JJ earns no shortage of satisfyingly violent retribution by the film’s end.

While the plot may sometimes bewilder, the talented cast always compels. Stewart’s trademark magnetism aligned with O’Brian’s fearless debut makes their reckless romance impossible to turn away from, even at its most gruesome. And the support from veterans like Harris gives Love Lies Bleeding’s descent into mayhem an extra unhinged edge.

Love on the Edge

At its bloody heart, Love Lies Bleeding is an ode to reckless devotion and desire burning out of control. Lou and Jackie’s initial attraction combusts into a mutually obsessive and increasingly destructive relationship. Through their toxic affair, the film explores love as an addictive and mind-altering force.

Like Jackie compulsively chasing her bodybuilding dreams, Lou becomes devoted to supporting her girlfriend at any cost. She enables Jackie’s steroid abuse and covers up her violent outbursts. Their all-consuming infatuation makes them willing co-conspirators in protecting their warped domestic bliss.

In parallel, Lou’s abusive brother-in-law JJ exhibits similarly toxic devotion for her battered sister Beth. Despite constant danger, Beth feels unable to leave behind the man she loves. Their relationship dynamic comments on why people stay committed to partners who hurt them.

As passions intensify, unpredictable plot twists ratchet up the stakes. Director Rose Glass maintains suspense by constantly subverting expectations. Just when it seems the story will go one way, she swerves it into more shocking territory. These wild tonal and narrative U-turns lend a gonzo, surreal vibe to the film’s descent into violence.

Moments of unexpected humor and tenderness punctuate the building chaos with rays of light in the darkness. But make no mistake – with its grisly imagery of smashed skulls and popping veins, Love Lies Bleeding lives up to its name when it comes to not sparing the blood and guts.

By pushing its central relationship past any sane boundaries through quasi-supernatural horror and pitch-black comedy, Glass creates her own distinctly visceral brand of queer romantic thriller. Love Lies Bleeding promises an electrifying ride for those daring enough to come along.

A Sinister and Surprising Saga

With its unpredictable twists and escalating mayhem, the plot of Love Lies Bleeding resembles its title – careening wildly out of control. After Lou and Jackie turn vigilantes against Lou’s abusive brother-in-law, the consequences ripple outward with snowballing violence. The stakes heighten as Lou discovers she may inherit her crime boss father’s criminal empire.

Just when the story seems headed one direction, Glass subverts expectations with some shocking new development. Scenes build nail-biting suspense before sudden eruptions of horror and pitch-black comedy. The narrative promotes emotional whiplash, ricocheting from tender moments between Lou and Jackie to nerve-jangling confrontations and gory crime scenes.

While always steering into the skid of its own excess, the film maintains a strong rhythm in its first half before the spree of insane plot twists in the climax. As events crescendo toward an ultraviolent final act showdown, the storytelling borders on incoherence. Yet the pacing overall strikes an engaging balance between slower character building and cerebral WTF moments.

For audiences craving films that push boundaries, Love Lies Bleeding delivers a singular thrill-ride. Its genre-hopping ambitions don’t always land cleanly. But surrendering expectations to the film’s dark rollercoaster of tonal and narrative surprises offers its own ominous pleasures. Like Lou and Jackie’s doomed affair, it’s one hell of a lurid trip destined to leave a lasting impression.

Surreal, Savage, and Seductive

Love Lies Bleeding marks a bold follow-up by director Rose Glass after her breakout indie horror Saint Maud. Both showcase Glass as a visionary filmmaker with a unique ability to viscerally capture the all-consuming nature of obsession. Where Saint Maud channeled religious fanaticism, Love Lies Bleeding explores the intoxicating madness of sexual fixation and toxic codependence within an even wilder genre pastiche. With A24’s backing, Glass raises the stakes to deliver an experience that’s surreal, savage, and ultimately seductive, even when stretching narrative plausibility.

While the movie offers plenty of grotesque violence and melodramatic twists to appease midnight movie crowds, its tender core relationship and fearless LGBTQ representation should resonate more widely. Between Stewart’s credibility and O’Brian’s magnetic debut, their spiraling romance provides a gripping emotional anchor. For audiences who crave stylish, subversive storytelling outside the mainstream mold, Love Lies Bleeding is a bloody good ride.

With its neon-drenched visuals and chilling synth score also leaving indelible impressions, Love Lies Bleeding further cements Rose Glass as a top emerging talent with a unique cinematic language all her own. While not without flaws, Glass certainly succeeds in her clear intent: to shock, to awe, and to burn raw passion onto every blisteringly etched frame.

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