Sweaty. Hot. Dangerous. Bloody.
A small desert town in New Mexico, a grimy warehouse gym whose toilets regularly overflow brown, and a shooting range run by a bug-eating gangster. 80s shorts and mullets.
Rose Glass went on a mission with Love Lies Bleeding to create the ultimate Be Gay, Do Crime movie, with this somewhat fantastical crime thriller filled with blood, sex and muscle.
Lou (Kristen Stewart) is bound to a life of monotony working in a gym when the arrival of Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a bodybuilder en route to a competition in Vegas, disrupts her life, and they begin a passionate romance.
There’s an air of sleaze throughout the film. From the griminess of Lou’s apartment to the gym she works in, and especially the gun range run by her crime-lord father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris).
Jackie’s arrival disrupts this sleaze and grime, with her ripped physique and sweat-covered body being an almost magical sight. She commands all of Lou’s attention instantly, along with the fellow gym rats.
Lou and Jackie’s connection is ignited by her offering steroids, leading to a night of passion. From there, things take off at a head-swimming pace fitting for U-Haul lesbians.
The film’s conflict comes from Lou’s brother-in-law JJ (Dave Franco), who abuses his wife Beth (Jena Malone) and the strained relationship Lou has with her father. Lou only remains in this deadbeat town to protect her sister, who is trapped in this cycle of abuse.
Things are complicated by Jackie working on Lou Sr’s shooting range as a waitress, and the connections between Jackie and Lou’s family only grow deeper from there.
Akin to some kind of superhero comic, the film gets most fantastical when Jackie grows in size as a result of the steroids, when she unleashes her anger. The film’s tone heightens throughout, culminating in a finale that is somewhere between biblical destruction and The Hulk.
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In contrast to the more surreal and sensationalist extremes, Stewart’s performance is inherently real in her micro mannerisms and display of relatability that we are drawn back down, kept from drifting too far into the absurd.
The film’s essence seems to live in its scenes under the stars–the repeated wide shot of the gym and its parking lot framed beneath the night sky, two cars driving in sinister tandem along the highway in the dark, Lou and Jackie stood, silent, above the chasm that runs like a rip through the desert, lit only by the headlights of their truck.
The era of the 80s feels suggestive, clearly imbued in the costuming and the hairstyles but failing to be totally transportative. Perhaps that’s in part due to the isolated locale, where beat-up trucks and cut-off tank tops will always exist, but either way, the impression that these star-crossed lovers could easily be moved forward or backwards in time adds to the film’s surreal nature.
A sweaty and seedy sensuality exists throughout, only ever subsiding to a simmer, buzzing in the background. Death in this town is brief, but the moments of frenzy before and after linger in the air.
Amid Lou’s chaos, the film almost rushes to remind us that Jackie is supposed to be chasing her dream of making it to Vegas for the bodybuilding competition she’s been training for. Her journey there and the competition itself are hurried, but this seemed, to me at least, reflective of Jackie’s state of psychosis and wooziness, doped up on steroids.
I’m sure that Love Lies Bleeding will be somewhat divisive. I don’t think everyone will like it, and some will probably hate it, but I feel pretty confident that it’ll nevertheless join the ranks of gay cult classics.
It’s fun, and I think that is its aim. At the end of the day, who doesn’t love to watch lesbians getting involved in a big bloody mess?
