Love Lies Bleeding

Katy O'Brian and Kristen Stewart

Rose Glass' Love Lies Bleeding has excited me more than any 2024 release thus far. Ms. Glass' film is more expansive and startling then her very good debut, Saint Maud. Part of this is because A24 has given Ms. Glass a bigger budget and she proves that she is up to the challenge. The superb cast brings a uniformity amongst the players that was not achieved in Saint Maud. That film proved Ms. Glass had an eye, but Love Lies Bleeding marks a technical advance. The film's soundscape is a quantum leap over Saint Maud, giving the new flick a truly unsettling tactile quality. The contrapuntal editing gives the film a disarming propulsion that helps Ms. Glass avoid the saggy passages of her debut. 

Kristen Stewart stars as Lou, a lonely lesbian who works at a gym in a seamy New Mexico small town in 1989.  Into her world walks Jackie (Katy O'Brian), a drifting bodybuilder as isolated and down on her luck as Lou. The two fall into a tumultuous and passionate affair. However, they are unable to avoid becoming entangled with Lou's dysfunctional family. Lou's estranged father (Ed Harris) is a sinister patriarch who runs a gun range and is on the radar of the FBI for his criminal endeavors. Lou's sister (Jena Malone) is married to an abusive lout played by Dave Franco. The decor and design of the film is strikingly grotesque, Harris' character even collects bugs. The hair is concistently and pronouncedly ugly. This look may not be everyone's cup of tea, Mom you should avoid this one, but it is consistent with a film that seeks to exist at the intersection of noir and horror.

As in Saint Maud, Glass views human relationships ambivalently. The characters, whether lovers or family members, murmur 'I love you', but as Bob Dylan puts it, "passion rules the arrow that flies." The love they pledge is inspired by eros which is much more volatile than agape. That is why so many of the characters turn on a dime emotionally from love to hate. The unconscious tug of the passions in Ms. Glass' films are symbolized by the forces and features of nature. The vortex in Saint Maud, caverns and fissures in Love Lies Bleeding. In Glass' latest film, the unconscious demons of one's past lies below the surface of the earth. Escape is possible, but only at a deadly cost. 

Ed Harris