Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

 

Rose Glass: Love Lies Bleeding (US/GB 2024) with Katy O'Brian (Jackie) and Kristen Stewart (Lou Jr.).

US/GB 2024

Director: Rose Glass

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Katy O'Brian, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco, Ed Harris

Loc: Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Languages: English

Distributor: Scanbox Entertainment

104 min

US festival premiere: 20 Jan 2024 Sundance.

Festival premiere outside the US: 18 Feb 2024 Berlin.

Finnish premiere (limited): 31 May 2024 Scanbox Finland Oy without subtitles.

Love & Anarchy: 37th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF): Midnight Mayhem.

Viewed at Kino Engel 1, Helsinki, Friday 20 Sep 2024

Peter Bradshaw quoted by HIFF 2024: "A gym manager (the magnetic Kristen Stewart) meets a bodybuilder with dreams of Las Vegas neon-lights in this action-packed romance that has become a phenomenon with audiences."

"British film-maker Rose Glass lets rip with some pure roid-rage cinema in this uproarious, horribly violent and lethally smart noir thriller sited in the Venn diagram overlap between bodybuilding, murder and sex. The bodycount climbs so alarmingly that the characters are in danger of running out of rugs to roll the corpses up in."

"Glass has assembled a great cast – but first among equals has to be Kristen Stewart who gives an excellent performance as gym manager and twitchy nicotine addict Lou, embroiled in an amour fou. Why aren’t we talking more, or in fact all the time, about what a great actress Stewart is? Her snapping: “No!” in a tense situation and thereby refusing to let herself have a cigarette from a stray pack, is one of the laugh lines of the year." Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Clarisse Loughrey quoted by HIFF 2024: "Glass is a macabre fabulist, decorating her movie with dimly lit spaces, blood-red flashbacks, and the ominous call of a seemingly bottomless canyon. But the feeling that permeates it all is desperate frustration – specifically, a woman’s yearning for the kind of power that could finally even the odds." Clarisse Loughrey, The Independent

Maria Lehtonen (HIFF 2024): "Ilmiöksi nousseessa, toiminnan-täyteisessä rakkaustarinassa kuntosalinpyörittäjä (magneettinen Kristen Stewart) tapaa Las Vegasin neon-valoista haaveilevan kehonrakentajan."

"Jackie (esikoisroolissaan karismaattinen Katy O’Brian) on matkalla kohti suurta unelmaansa, Las Vegasin kehonrakennuskisoja. Lyhyeksi pysähdykseksi tarkoitettu visiitti piskuisessa Uuden Meksikon kaupungissa venähtää, kun paikallisen punttiksen nuhjuinen duunari Lou (Kristen Stewart) iskee silmänsä määrätietoiseen vierailijaan. Loulle Jackie on suurin mahdollinen unelma, toivo paremmasta elämästä ja ennen kaikkea rakkaudesta. Loun onneksi sydän sykkii molemminpuolisesti."

"Pian Loun perhekoukerot ulottavat rikolliset lonkeronsa nuorten rakastavaisten elämään. Patriarkaatin ikeessä Lou alistuu likaiseen työhön muun perheen lailla, tarjoten samalla rahapulassa olevalle Jackielle mahdollisuuden hyödyntää muskeleitaan muuhunkin kuin lavalla tepasteluun. Jackielle avautuu ovi maailmaan, jossa hiki ja veri tirskuu ja jossa muskeleista voi kasvattaa monstereita."

"Debyyttiohjauksellaan Saint Maud (2019) säväyttänyt brittiläinen ohjaaja Rose Glass iskee hikisellä muskeliunelmallaan kultasuoneen. Neonoirmainen ja pulpahtava teos vakuuttaa näyttelijä-suorituksillaan mutta ennen kaikkea naiskuvallaan ja rakkaustarinallaan. Debyyttinsä lailla Glass osaa luovia mielenmaisemissa omia polkujaan tarjoten samaan aikaan ihastuttavan ja kauhistuttavan katsomiskokemuksen." Maria Lehtonen

AA: Rose Glass made a mark with her debut feature film Saint Maud, a new wave horror movie inspired by William Blake. It was instantly evident that Glass has an authentic cinema sense and a privileged access to altered states of consciousness.

Her second feature film the Englishwoman has shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Again there is a genre genealogy, from film noir (Gun Crazy) to female road movies (Thelma & Louise) to Russ Meyer go-go splatter action (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) not forgetting Herschell Gordon Lewis (The Gore Gore Girls) to comic book super-heroism (The Incredible Hulk) to 1950s science fiction (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) to 1970s-1980s muscle and exercise worship (Pumping Iron, Jane Fonda's Workout) to Tarantino revisionism in genre revival with its penchant for excessive bloodletting (Kill Bill, True Romance, Natural Born Killers). There is also a link to a subdivision of gangster films located on the Mexican border with abysses for dumping corpses of those who try to mess with the drug trade and other activities that do not stand daylight. This year I have happened to catch an early specimen, Anthony Mann's masterful film noir Border Incident.

All this Glass mixes in her genre cocktail shaker. Love Lies Bleeding is a toxic voyage into misogyny and femicide. The movie is a purgatory in which the leading ladies take extreme measures with a "macho slut" attitude.

Kristen Stewart plays a working-class action hero, building on the opaque mask-like persona with which she became famous, interpreting Bella Swan in the Twilight series. Tough and vulnerable. (But I prefer her tender and humoristic side as in Café Society).

The discovery of the film is Katy O'Brian, the actress, martial artist, former police officer, personal trainer and bodybuilder, here in her breakthrough role, her first major role in a feature film. During her seven year career at the police force she worked at the Crisis Intervention Team, specializing among other things in psychosis and depression. She discontinued her bodybuilding career because she did not want to use steroids. I list these CV merits because they help understand her convincing presence in Love Lies Bleeding. She builds on reality and takes a wild leap into comic-book fantasy heroism / antiheroism.

Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian have formidable presences, but I do not believe in the love affair of their characters.

Of the rest of the cast, Ed Harris is outwardly almost unrecognizable as the monster father Lou Sr. He is a gargoyle, yet the performance is psychologically powerful, credible and terrifying. 

Rose Glass builds on her talent in altered states of consciousness. It is a rare talent, and there is not a dull moment in the movie.

Visually, Love Lies Bleeding is striking. The sense of light and colour in Ben Fordersman's cinematography is extraordinary. Is it the natural light of New Mexico, or may there be interesting filters to power the colours? Cosmic views of the starry New Mexico sky put things into a perspective of eternity.

...

ON WOMEN AND VIOLENCE

Love Lies Bleeding is a female superpower saga. It builds on an excess of gory violence and the pre-civilized code of "eye for eye". (Read: revenge. The opposite of justice). The sexual violence in the movie is deeply shocking, including the psychology of the horribly mutilated and disfigured wife who defends her monster husband to the end.

I am puzzled by the interest of women film-makers to imitate male violent revenge fantasy. Violence in men is inherent. Aggression can be positive and beautiful when it is channeled into constructive action such as work, enterprise, building, sport, competition and creativity, also consensual, non-abusive sex (there is violence in much sex, not only in s/m). But aggression is also a vicious curse which men spend their entire lifetimes combating against. Violence is not something that men pursue but something they try to harness.

I know I'm old school, but I have always found that women have higher superpowers. I subscribe to Susan Sontag's remark that if women would be in power, there would be no wars. (In an interim period women, trying to prove themselves, may be worse than men).