This review is based on a screening at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
Sex in cinema returns with a snatch and jerk in Love Lies Bleeding, a pulpy crime thriller that’s also the horniest ode to big, muscular women this side of actual fetish content. This is a film that throbs with desire, and even the scenes that aren’t explicitly sexual are viewed through an erotically charged lens. In this film, a canyon isn’t just a canyon, and a gun is definitely way more than a gun.
Writer-director Rose Glass’ debut feature, Saint Maud, directed its violence inward, through a character whose guilt about her lesbian desires manifests in masochistic ways. The characters in Love Lies Bleeding, meanwhile, are out, in multiple senses of the word. The film is set in late ’80s New Mexico, but homophobic violence is low on the list of threats that Lou (Kristen Stewart) must deal with every day. Her father, a powerful arms dealer also named Lou (Ed Harris), “doesn’t care” that his daughter “likes girls,” and the younger Lou receives some protection as a result. That doesn’t mean they get along, however, or that the elder Lou isn’t dangerous.
Jackie (Katy O’Brian), meanwhile, has been disowned by her family, and has spent the last little while hitchhiking across the Southwest and sleeping rough. Her passion is bodybuilding, and of all the wood-paneled, sweat-stained weightlifting gyms in all the world, she just has to drifts into Lou’s. The frisson between the two is powerful and immediate, as is the chemistry between the leads; the first 30 minutes or so of Love Lies Bleeding are delirious with lust, alternating bed-breaking sex scenes with imagery of egg yolks and shots of Stewart staring at O’Brian like she wants to swallow her whole.
The first time Jackie and Lou sleep together, the veins in Jackie’s arm bulge and her bicep muscles ripple, the first hints of a supernatural element that manifests in truly surprising fashion later on. This euphoric transformation is implied to be the result of Lou introducing Jackie to steroids, a theme that Glass uses in ways that are wide-ranging and, frankly, a little reckless. The concept of “'roid rage” is used as a crutch for character motivation, and a catalyst for basically whatever the director wants to happen next. And a lot happens in this movie, particularly after Jackie inserts herself into Lou’s complicated family dynamics in impulsive and shockingly violent fashion.
The violence is as potent as the sexuality: The sound is mixed like a Sonny Chiba movie from the ’70s – loud and heavy on the bone crunching. The savage actions themselves appear in sudden, sickening bursts, and the gore effects are stomach-churning. The forward thrust (pun intended) expressed in Lost Highway-esque shots of desolate desert roads disappearing under the wheels of Lou’s truck slows down as Love Lies Bleeding escalates to hysterically bloody heights in the second half. But considering how flushed and scrambled its characters are, perhaps it’s inevitable that the movie would have trouble staying focused as well.
Jackie and Lou are both the best and the worst possible match for one another, each with her own emotional baggage and covert potential for violence. Stewart, going full dirtbag mode in sleeveless tees and a messy mullet, expresses Lou’s repressed memories and suppressed rage with the jumpy physicality she always does so well. O’Brian’s performance, meanwhile, is closer to the surface, and so is her character; Jackie is a person who does what she wants, when she feels like it, regardless of the consequences – of which there are many.
At times, Love Lies Bleeding seems to be hindering itself, combining a real sense of menace with hair, makeup, and costumes that would be comedic under any other circumstances. The movie is just so weird, however, that the fact that Ed Harris is wearing a hairpiece that’s bald on top and long on the sides starts to feel normal after a while. A deep dive into the kinkiest recesses of its creator’s mind, this is a film that’s pure “WTF?” in the best way possible.
