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.
Rose Glass’ first feature-length movie as both writer and director made violence internalized by Saint Maud, whose character’s masochism was fueled by guilt about her being lesbian. Outwardly these characters are out In Love Lies Bleeding. Although set in late ’80s New Mexico, homophobic violence is not high on Lou (Kristen Stewart)’s list of challenges each day. Her dad, who is Ed Harris also named Lou cares little whether or not his daughter likes girls because they still have his protection up to some level. Nonetheless, he remains dangerous and does not get along with the younger Lou either.
Jackie (Katy O’Brian), in the meantime, has been abandoned by her family, and over the last couple of weeks, she’s been hitchhiking here and there across the Southwest Coast while sleeping on the streets. Her other passion is muscle building, therefore, she had to enter Lou’s gym even with all those wood-paneled gyms that were soiled by sweat everywhere else. There is a powerful, spontaneous frisson between them and between leads as well, Love Lies Bleeding’s start-up thirty minutes or so are full of lustful delusion scenes in between bed-breaking sex ones and images of yellow egg yolks along with Stewart glaring at O’Brian as though he wants to swallow her alive.
The first time Jackie sleeps with Lou, she ripples through bulging veins in her arms and biceps that serve as an early indication of a supernatural presence that turns out to be really surprising later on. As one can see from Glass’s wide usage of this theme, obviously risky approaches made to this issue by steroid addiction were more or less reckless. “Roid rage” is exploited for character motivation purposes as well as for basic directorial convenience such as whatever comes next. And there is quite a lot after Jackie violently gets involved in Lou’s complicated family life without any forethought whatsoever.
It’s only that violence is just intense like sex: The sound design seems similarly mixed like Sonny Chiba films from the 1970s loud and crunchy on broken bones. The gory effects are stomach-churning because they emerge suddenly after which it disappears again. While Lost Highway-like shots of empty desert roads fading away under Lou’s truck wheels demonstrate forward thrusting (pun intended), Love Lies Bleeding increases heightening its emotionally bloody pitch towards its climax halfway through. On the other hand, it may not be surprising considering how disheveled and rattled these characters are then perhaps this film might not be able to maintain a focused storyline.
Both Jackie and Lou are terrible and perfect at being partners with each other because both of them possess their own emotional burdens and concealed tendencies for violence. As usual, Stewart represents Lou’s repressed memories combined with suppressed fury by means of her own characteristically shaky physicality and complete dirt bag mode, in dirty tees with sleeves cut off and messy mullet. Her performance is quite close to the surface as is her character, she is one who does anything she wants when she feels like it regardless of what happens afterward –and many things do happen.
It seems that Love Lies Bleeding is sometimes sabotaging itself, integrating a hair-dresser comedy into an entirely different environment that calls for menace also through the garments and make-up. However, this film is just so outlandish that it would seem normal after some time that Ed Harris has a bald top-long-hair-on-sides wig. It takes a deep plunge into its creators’ most perverted thoughts making it the purely “WTF?” movie ever made.
Conclusion
Love Lies Bleeding is a film that combines the intensity of lesbian sex with graphic violence which will surely leave you feeling blood gushing through your veins. Kristen Stewart has brought her usual jumpy physicality to bear on embodying this dirtbag character, and she shares incredible chemistry with Katy O’Brian her co-star. Even though it loses direction and veers into an over-the-top realm in its second half, it does not miss any of its pulpy fetishistic delights.
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