Directed by:
Rose GlassCinematography:
Ben FordesmanComposer:
Clint MansellCast:
Kristen Stewart, Katy O'Brian, Ed Harris, Jena Malone, Dave Franco, Anna Baryshnikov, Keith Jardine, Catherine Haun, David DeLao, Jerry G. Angelo, Lily Harris (more)VOD (4)
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From Director Rose Glass comes an electric new love story; reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family. (A24)
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Reviews (6)
The Tail-Leafed Columnea. A one-year plant, symbolizing hopelessness and desperate love. That's the meaning of the title, and then there's also something about human ambitions, toxic relationships, and the pursuit of the American Dream. New Mexico, mullets, rotten teeth, sweaty armpits in the gym, a sweaty intimacy coordinator, and violence as the most direct route from one problem to another. However, the motifs and methods ultimately didn't work as well as they could have because the slightly careless script didn't give them the weight they needed. Kristen Stewart, playing the "small-town boy" and mimicking the neurotic demeanor of young Winona Ryder, tried her hardest, but it didn't help much. The metaphorical insert about confidence stronger than anabolic steroids, which recalled a certain sci-fi comedy with Daryl Hannah, wasn’t a problem for me, especially since it helped neutralize Three-Finger from Wrong Turn. By the way, was Ed Harris in that?
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A feminist bodybuilding story with dirty 1980s stylisation that deals with faith in one’s own body, the pursuit of the American Dream, toxic family relationships and the destructive power of love. The film connects various situations – a sweaty lesbian romance set in a gym, a redneck family gangster flick and a hallucinogenic steroid delirium bordering on body horror – but it is only half convincing in all of them. The characters and their motivations thus get lost in the accumulating bloody twists and continuously intensifying bizarre scenes.
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I once suffered through Rose Glass' Saint Maud, but I was looking forward to this one thanks to the stylish trailer. It's okay and I'm very much between 3 and 4 stars, but I'm going to be stricter in the end because the plot is pretty straightforward with no significant changes throughout, and Kristen Stewart is not a pretty sight to look at. Luckily the testosterone-soaked Katy O’Brian was the best character in the whole movie, I could see her as a final girl in some kind of monster movie. The film has a nice retro look of the American backwoods, a nice lesbian romance with R-rated erotic scenes, a sleazy Ed Harris, and there were some corpses, so I liked it, I enjoyed it, but I was expecting a bit more. The bizarre fantasy ending didn't quite work for me. 65%
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I was very keen to follow Rose Glass after her debut horror film Saint Maud in 2019, and now that I've seen her second feature, Love Lies Bleeding, my curiosity for her future is suddenly a little less. This feminist fantasy thriller, populated by warped, affectless and universally unlikeable characters acting with motives I can't even fathom in the mind-numbing eclipse that the festival haze brings, has left me genuinely perplexed. I have to say that the idea I had formed in my head about this film beforehand was many times more interesting and workable than what I ended up getting on screen. It was either going to be far less bizarre or far, far more bizarre, but it ended up somewhere in the middle of the road. [KVIFF 2024]
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Just go see this film and avoid the trailers, which unfortunately are spoilers and could raise misleading expectations. Love Lies Bleeding has a neo-noir heart pumping blood to the organs of post-modern shifts that include a rural desert setting, refreshingly subtle 1980s retro stylisation (no kitsch as in Stranger Things) and a crowning gender+queer twist. Fortunately, there’s no cartilaginous connective tissue here, as everything is driving by the massive musculature of captivating physicality, vivid stylisation and a distinctive creative perspective. Rose Glass confirms that she belongs among the makers of intensely sensory films, thus expanding this hitherto male-dominated club (with Gaspar Noé, Jonas Åkerlund, Jonathan Glazer and Harmony Korine at the fore) with a fresh, unique voice that in certain respects is more down to earth while at the same time managing to incorporate a much broader range of motifs. Like the other aforementioned filmmakers, Glass works with exaggerated visual stylisation, highly distinctive characters and a modern visuality unbound by the limits of mainstream hyper-realism. She spins the symbiosis of these elements into a captivatingly physical experience for viewers. Accordingly, her work with noir is not limited to the usual formulas such as the concept of the femme fatale or the narrative structure of an investigation. She goes to the instinctual and dark essence of the genre, even diving into the dark, viscous waters of Southern Gothic. She highlights passion, obsession, the dreadful appeal of violence and the power of the manipulativeness of blood ties. She also manages to weave into the main story a number of complementary motifs, from the monstrousness of ego to the myth of the land of limitless opportunities. In doing so, however, she still tells of love and its power to crush us and everything around.
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