Glass’ sophomore feature is tense, stylish, violent, sexy and takes some artistic risks, headlined by an excellent Kristen Stewart playing a gym manager who falls in love with a female bodybuilder in a drugs-and-guns-infested small town.
Review #2,842
Dir. Rose Glass
2024 | USA, UK | Crime, Romance, Thriller | 104 min | 2.39:1 | English
Not rated – likely to be R21 for violence and grisly images, sexual content, nudity, language throughout and drug use.
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris, Dave Franco, Jena Malone
Plot: Reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Las Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.
Awards: Official Selection (Sundance); Nom. for Teddy Award (Berlinale)
Distributor: A24
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Small Town Crime & Corruption; Opposites Attract; Love & Aggression
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
While it may have taken half a decade for Rose Glass to mount her sophomore feature after the critical success of the horror mystery Saint Maud (2019), Love Lies Bleeding will likely expand her audience base.
Set in 1989, the film consciously evokes a quality reminiscent of early Coens like Blood Simple (1984), David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990) and perhaps a tinge of Thelma & Louise (1991).
It is this neo-noir-cum-pulpy-crime-in-a-sordid-rural-town vibe that Glass nails with some degree of aplomb, fashioning a tense and stylish drama about Lou, a gym manager who falls in love with Jackie, a female bodybuilder on a chance encounter.
Kristen Stewart, in an exceptional performance, embodies Lou’s insecurities, her shyness but also her stasis. Yet, she also hides a dark past, one that has been shaped by the drugs-and-guns-infested environment and family she has grown up with.
Jackie becomes the spark that turns her on—not just sexually but mentally, as they both find themselves at the end of the metaphorical cliff when a dead body threatens to expose them.
“Revenge gets ripped.”
Unapologetically violent and sexy, Love Lies Bleeding gives audiences the R-rated content that they so desire; at the same time, Glass isn’t afraid to take some artistic risks with a few wildly unexpected moments best described as pure, unbridled psycho-surrealism.
Ghastly yet empowering, the film is accompanied by a pulsating score from Clint Mansell (best known for Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain) that channels the twistedness from within.
While it works well as a thriller, Love Lies Bleeding’s main thematic tension between love and aggression elevates its plotting from merely operating in the realm of crime and misdemeanour.
In this New Mexican town where the status quo of complicit corruption and abuse seems way too stubbornly rooted in its parched grounds, it takes two lesbian women to upend all manner of propriety and assert a newfound sense of post-justice morality.
Grade: B+
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 
[…] to the likes of, say, the titular duo in Thelma & Louise (1991), or the protagonists in Love Lies Bleeding […]
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