Year:  2024

Director:  Rose Glass

Rated:  MA

Release:  14 March 2024

Distributor: VVS

Running time: 104 minutes

Worth: $13.90
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Cast:
Kristen Stewart, Katy O'Brian, Ed Harris, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco

Intro:
… a slick, well acted and atmospheric ride, whose destination isn’t as important as the journey.

Love can be a beautiful thing, like a basket of puppies or a handful of pingers. It can be a feeling of perfect connection, of completeness and souldeep satisfaction. It can also be the source of obsessive insanity that corrodes all sense of reason, personal safety or empathy. Love can be a tempest, destroying everything in its path and leaving people who experience it shaken, confused and wondering what the hell just happened. Love Lies Bleeding, the second feature from director Rose Glass (Saint Maud), deals with the latter variety of amour, showcasing the kind of relationship that causes scars and racks up a bodycount. The film works, for the most part, although it gets a bit unwieldy towards the end.

Loves Lies Bleeding is the story of Lou (Kristen Stewart), a withdrawn gym manager with a dark past. She spies spunky aspiring bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian) in her gym one day and is immediately smitten. The pair begin a torrid and passionate romance that involves a great deal of rooting (which is good) and a similarly high amount of steroid taking (which is less ideal). Before long, Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone) ends up hospitalised because of her abusive husband, JJ (Dave Franco). That’s when Jackie, hopped off on way too many ‘roids, decides to assist her love the best way she can think of…

The trailer for Loves Lies Bleeding makes it look like a revenge thriller with plenty of action. This really isn’t accurate. The film is much more of a steamy, trailer park gothic full of grimy locations, grungy characters and greasy haircuts that make the humble mullet look high falutin’. The direction from Glass is top notch, making every scene either oddly beautiful or skin-crawlingly disgusting, with very few moments in between these extremes. This is a movie where even our heroines’ relationship is toxic, manipulative and occasionally violent. Suffice to say, it’s not always an easy watch, but the performances across the board, but particularly Stewart and O’Brian, are excellent (kudos to Anna Baryshnikov for portraying one of the most memorably loathsome creatures on film in recent memory).

On the downside, the script isn’t quite as good as the direction, and feels a little undisciplined in the third act, as if it’s not entirely sure what impression it wants to leave the audience with. It’s a bummer because the first two thirds of the flick masterfully ratchet up the tension only to let it fizzle out with a whimper. Still and all, Love Lies Bleeding is a slick, well acted and atmospheric ride, whose destination isn’t as important as the journey. And while it ends imperfectly, there’s enough nightmarish and jaw dropping imagery along the way to keep you glued to your seat.

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