‘Love Lies Bleeding’: Sundance Review

Dir: Rose Glass. US/UK 2023. 104mins

An audacious, pulpy crime-thriller, British director Rose Glass’ second function stars Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian as passionate lovers on a collision course with a blood-soaked reckoning. Love Lies Bleeding boasts depraved humour, smouldering intercourse scenes and stunning graphic violence, portray a damning image of America as a seedy, amoral den of determined souls and shattered goals. However regardless of the colorful surroundings and gutsy performances, the movie in the end doesn’t supply a lot past the vivid, tawdry floor, with the outrageousness of the couple’s predicament finally feeling spinoff relatively than transgressive.

Glass weaves an intoxicating ambiance of lust and paranoia

Following its premiere in Sundance’s Midnight strand and a stop-off on the Berlinale, A24 will unveil Love Lies Bleeding within the US on March 8 and the UK on April 19 (by means of Lionsgate), catering to indie crowds who will savour the image’s B-movie vibes. Stewart ought to be a draw, as will Glass, a former Display screen Worldwide Star Of Tomorrow whose 2019 debut Saint Maud was nominated for 2 Baftas, together with excellent British movie.

Set in small-town New Mexico in 1989, Love Lies Bleeding introduces us to Lou (Stewart), a sullen younger girl who works a dead-end job at a gymnasium. Her world begins trying brighter as soon as she meets Jackie (O’Brian), a bodybuilder who needs to compete in a match in Las Vegas. They rapidly fall in love, however their relationship faces extreme roadblocks after they butt heads with Lou’s misogynistic brother-in-law JJ (Dave Franco) and her prison father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris). 

As with Saint Maud, a psychological horror movie about non secular fervour, Glass as soon as once more explores intense characters pushed by their compulsions. Lou and Jackie have a strong carnal attraction and shortly Lou helps her new lover sculpt her physique, plying Jackie with steroids that rapidly bulk her up. Jackie’s dream of turning into a champion bodybuilder quickly turns into Lou’s dream as properly, though the steroids have a detrimental impact on Jackie, making her frighteningly aggressive. That turns into a harmful proposition as soon as they plot to do one thing about JJ, who’s bodily abusive to Lou’s submissive sister Beth (Jena Malone). 

The lovers’ plan backfires disastrously, leaving Lou and Jackie in a frantic state of affairs. At that second, Love Lies Bleeding shifts from being a moody love story — albeit one with a palpable sense of dread hovering over the proceedings — to a gritty crime saga during which one dangerous alternative results in one other, the stakes escalating because the Lou and Jackie realise that their hope of operating off to Vegas to start a brand new life will now by no means materialise.

Reuniting with Saint Maud cinematographer Ben Fordesman and editor Mark Cities, Glass weaves an intoxicating ambiance of lust and paranoia, imagining a burned-out American West affected by weapons, medicine, intercourse and homicide. Not fully efficiently, Love Lies Bleeding appears like an homage to how the nation is portrayed in motion pictures, the luridness tending towards exaggeration relatively than strict adherence to actuality. However inside that critique of American extra there additionally exists a defiantly feminist rage, with Lou and Jackie discovering that nobody will assist them inside this merciless patriarchal society.

The violence that outcomes from their fury, whereas initially startling and cathartic, loses its impression because the script (co-written by Glass and Weronika Tofilska) begins to tread acquainted crime-thriller terrain. Love Lies Bleeding by no means loses its enthusiasm for outrageous twists and grand emotional thrives. However Lou and Jackie change into much less fascinating as soon as the plot mechanics take over, their fiery love taking a backseat to scheming and double-crossing as Lou Sr. decides to take issues into his personal palms.

Stewart flashes the requisite combination of steeliness and fragility as a cautious loner sucked into the tractor beam of Jackie’s sexual magnetism. Lou’s piercing stare hints on the untold horrors she has endured rising up in her twisted household — we’ll study extra about that because the story hurtles alongside — whereas O’Brian performs Jackie as a ticking time bomb, an formidable bodybuilder who’s bodily and mentally warped by the copious steroids she consumes.

Glass by no means judges these characters, who appear to hark again to different cinematic lovers on the lam, their for happiness hampered by the violence strewn throughout their path. Love Lies Bleeding makes no apologies for its stylistic boldness or its rising physique depend, however its swagger can’t cover a nagging hollowness beneath.