Love Lies Bleeding
don't ever fall in love, ok? It hurts
In the spectacular Love Lies Bleeding, there is blood, love, muscles, skin, veins popping, evil men, jealous girlfriends, and a father who defines love in ways which would do Oscar Wilde proud. To be precise, he enunciates a version of "Yet each man kills the thing he loves" rather emotionally, and with a gun in his hand which he fully intends to use.
It's clear right from the beginning that this will be a gorgeous movie, in a completely unsettling way. Harald Grosskopf is on the soundtrack, the camera is kinetic as it travels into the gym, the close-ups of bodies reveal muscles which seem to be at breaking point - and then there is Kristen Stewart's Lou, taking trash out with a hand deep in a commode. There is a neon hardness, a combination of sharp lights and deep shadows, in a town we soon discover is rotten to its core.
But Lou is different. Behind her rough unsmiling countenance, there is a tender contest swinging between one's fight with one's life and one's duty to the people she loves. And you can make that out immediately as she hears a tape on how smoking is bad for health even as she keeps chugging on one continuously. It is obvious she has ambitions beyond what she is and a desire to transcend herself.
Kristen Stewart looks unwashed, unkempt, tired, cynical, sullen, bitchy and incredibly lovely, sexy.
In between, there is Jackie (Katy O’Brian) who first appears being humped in a car by someone who has promised her a job for a quickie. It's obvious that fate is playing its pieces of dominoes to unsettle or straighten things. Because Jackie appears in the gym and there's instant attraction between the girls. There's violence, there's some violent lovemaking. The setting is just getting ready for something serious - seriously good, but more likely, seriously bad. Because love slowly finds its way in, fuses the girls and makes them look longingly at each other. Very soon they are making plans to go to Las Vegas for the bodybuilding competition for which Jackie is preparing. For Jackie this is only a stopover town.
But you know, things will not go the straight line and will find their own drift. But the couple's chemistry is fiery and they fit into each other's bodies beautifully. They are almost made for each other: the one with the rippling muscles and the other who is soft, vulnerable, and all-giving. And both are desperate for something to add up to a meaning.
Very soon Lou's family connections start getting into Jackie. The person she had a quickie with is Lou's brother-in-law. The place she starts working in belongs to Lou's father. It is almost as if there was a net which was closing around Jackie - and she being deliriously unaware of it.
The look and feel of the film is hard and shiny. Light reflects from surfaces, but as the girls fall in love it grows softer. Kristen Stewart is completely without makeup throughout the film and has never looked more beautiful as she goes through an arc of despair, love, angst, release.
There's an inevitability, and a deep sadness, which comes in as Jackie tries to flee her destiny. Small towns are often traps. Even visitors get trapped like its denizens. And we wait, with ragged breath, to see how the losses spin out. As they do, magnificently so.
The ending is both fantastical and fantastic. If a film is all about character development, there is a subtle twist, a reminder of not taking any character for granted, to not put anyone into pigeonholes of singular notoriety. And that the Ever After of every love story is also a story. And that you wouldn’t mind being Kristen Stewart’s next casualty.
Synopsis:
Jackie, a bodybuilder, stops at a small town in rural New Mexico, en route to Las Vegas for a bodybuilding contest. And sparks fly between her and Lou, a manager in a local gym. But nothing is simple when there’s a lover’s family to confront, and particularly when they consist of a drug runner, a wife beater and a gun range owner.
Ze Trailer:
Additional reading (if you're a freak for incandescent reviews):
From The Hollywood Reporter -
"When a magnificently gnarled Ed Harris, wearing stringy Argus Filch hair and chomping on a horned beetle in a moment of psychotic rage is far from the weirdest thing in a movie, you know you’re in for a wild experience. That’s what Brit director Rose Glass delivers in Love Lies Bleeding, a lesbian neo-noir drenched in brooding nightscapes, violent crime and more hardcore KStew cool than has ever been packaged in such a potent concentrate. Seriously, is there anyone who doesn’t want to watch Kristen Stewart flicking back a greasy shag, driving an old pickup and chain-smoking in grubby tank tops?"
Read the entire review here.
Trivia:
The title comes from a plant’s name (Amaranthus caudatus) - and of course a song by Elton John!
The character of Lou was written with Kristen Stewart in mind!
This is the second film directed by Ross Glass. Her first film Saint Maud was included among the “1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die”
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