Love Lies Bleeding tells a love story as an action thriller and uses a metaphoric exploration of women power in a dynamic story about people on the edges. Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian star.
Love Lies Bleeding isn’t for everyone. Having said that I think it’s an important film from an important director, Rose Glass. Rose Glass co-wrote the film with Weronika Tofilska. It’s like nothing you’ve seen before.
The plot opens in a dusty New Mexico town. A newcomer walks into the rundown gym managed by Lou (Kristen Stewart). It’s a woman named Jackie (Katy O’Brian). She is ripped, she is hot. Lou is instantly smitten.
Jackie is a body builder on her way to a competition in Las Vegas. She’s hitched this far but needs to work for a few days and wants to continue to train in Lou’s gym.
Katy O’Brian actually is a body builder and is perfect in this part. It takes about 5 minutes for Lou and Jackie to hook up and for Jackie to be staying at Lou’s place until time to go to Las Vegas. The sex between them is as rough and physical as the two of them are. They fall in love.
Love Lies Bleeding has a lot to say about love. There’s love between Lou and Jackie. Through no fault of their own that leads to violence in a quest for justice. There’s love between Lou and her sister Beth (Jena Malone), who is battered and beaten by her husband JJ (Dave Franco). Beth won’t press charges against him because she loves him. There’s a kind of conditional love from Lou and Beth’s father, Lou Sr (Ed Harris). There’s a needy and demanding love from Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), who wants Lou desperately.
I may be wrong, but I thought the central question in the film was, “What is love? How do you express it?”
Lou offers Jackie steroids at the beginning of the film. By the end Jackie is fueled by ‘roid rage. She hallucinates vomiting up an entire Lou while on the stage in Las Vegas, then she attacks some of her fellow competitors.
Lou Sr is the villain in the piece. As the bodies pile up in the story, the status quo between Lou, Lou Sr, and Daisy changes. The newcomer Jackie and her feminine power energize Lou. The two of them do lots of damage while trying to do the right thing. Metaphorically, Jackie is larger than life. She’s a giant, a monster, a feminine archetype who can squash men like bugs and carry Lou above the clouds.
The color red carries meaning. The entire screen turns red when Lou thinks back on things she’s lived through, especially at her father’s hands. When Jackie’s rage runs out of control, we see a red filter over everything. Red is put to a different use when the credits roll and we watch distant silhouettes of the two stars moving on a stage lit in red.
There’s one especially gruesome scene involving a dead man. Beth is hospitalized with a bloody pulp of a face. This is not a pretty film. But the most chilling murder is quiet and deliberate – an act in the service of love.
As I said, this isn’t the movie for everyone. I found it masterful and thought provoking. It’s about moral courage and standing up for your right to exist. It’s about caring for the people you love when pushed to extremes. It’s a story told with dirt, sweat, blood, ugly hair, and popping veins.
Max is streaming this one.
A personal footnote about the location of the film. I lived in New Mexico for many years and recognized most of the settings. There was a deep rift or split in the earth that was an important part of the story. I didn’t think anything like that existed in New Mexico and I was right. Those particular scenes were filmed in the Mojave Desert.
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