Love Lies Bleeding - Movie Review

Critics Score - 7 of 10

General Audience Score - 7 of 10

Kristen Stewart is an actress that has continuously been turning in superior performances since her early days working in the Twilight films, which are regularly mocked. Although she almost reverted to her twilight days with her Crimes Of The Future performance, her work in Personal Shopper, Clouds Of Sils Maria and most recently for her Oscar nominated role in Spencer, she has really taken her acting game to the upper tier. Stewart’s latest film drops into theatres this weekend, from A24 studios we get Love Lies Bleeding, where she works with the director Rose Glass, who directed Saint Maud. Although for brief moments through Bleeding we get a few of the Stewart eye flutters and it seems like she may revert to her previous acting style, she keeps it together and manages to sell us on this gym manager from New Mexico. This film is violent as times, sexy in others, very weird in one specific instance, but it’s mostly just some good fun and pretty entertaining throughout, even if it’s not exactly high art cinema. It takes place in the late 80’s, early 90’s from my best estimate, so expect the tone and look of the film to skew towards the retro, for those of us alive through those decades. This movie won’t blow many audiences away, either cinephiles or general audiences, but it’s a perfectly good film for what it is. Even if you don’t Love it, you’re more likely than not to at least enjoy and like this Love Lies Bleeding.

SYNOPSIS - Our tale opens with a shot of what appears to be a canyon, we’re perched overhead looking down into the inky black bottom, the camera lens is colored making the rocky walls appear to glow red. The sound of a low rumbling is heard, it reminded me of the sound like you might hear from a group of monks doing a meditation ritual. The low groaning noise continues as the camera descends into the abyss until in the blackness we begin to see points of light and the camera emerges into a night sky full of stars. As the camera begins to pan down, a large warehouse style building slowly comes into view with the words “Crater Gym” on the nearest side. A large roll up door along the adjacent side allows a few people to walk in and out of the gym and we catch some glimpses of people inside doing some aerobic activity. The shot approaches the gym and we go in through the same door, then via some quick editing, we see motivational signs posted such as “Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body” and “Only Losers Quit”. The quick edits continue to show us close up shots of someone’s red shoes while they’re jumping rope, a bicep while making a curl and hilariously a side shot of a man’s hairy nipple while doing a bench press. We finally catch up with the gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart), she’s sporting a sleeveless white shirt with Staff printed on the back, as she’s elbow deep in the women’s bathroom toilet, trying to clear a clogged drain. As she’s pulling wads of nastiness from out of the toilet and putting it into a bucket, Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov) pops up and awkwardly inquires if Lou would want to meet up later. Lou blows her off and makes up an excuse that she’s gotta help her sister Beth (Jena Malone) with some stuff. 

After rejecting another more seductive advance from Daisy, Lou closes up shop, locking the door and driving home in her light blue and white Ford pickup truck. She heads upstairs to her place at the Mi Casa Apartments where she lives on the second floor. Lou feeds her cat, gets a beer from the fridge and presses play on a cassette tape, we hear, “When you smoke a cigarette, you inhale a drug called nicotine”, as she lights up and begins to smoke one. She finally lays face down on her couch, completely clothed, touching herself a few moments before the scene cuts and we’re taken to the back of a car. The camera gives us a hilarious close up shot of the aforementioned Beth’s husband JJ (Dave Franco), a weaselly looking guy with a mullet, we see his face as he’s having sex with Jackie (Katy O’Brian), his distorted mouth agape as he finishes. JJ has promised Jackie to help her get a job in exchange for sex at a gun range he works at owned by Lou’s father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris). But before Jackie starts her job, we see her wake up under a bridge, do a light workout of some calisthenics, drink some water and brush her teeth out in the open, we begin to clue in that she’s something of a drifter. Lou visits her sister Beth at her house and after saying hi to her kids, she takes in the fact that Beth’s arm is in a sling and she has darkness around her eyes and nose. Lou’s encounter with JJ has a less than friendly tone, she knows her sister is stuck in an abusive relationship with him and wants to get her out. But when Jackie begins to workout at Lou’s gym, Lou can’t help but to check out the very toned and muscular lady and the two of them hit it off, with steamy scenes arriving aplenty. But when Beth finally ends up in the hospital due to an incident with JJ, a distraught Lou sparks a rage fueled Jackie to initiate a series of events that threatens to land them all six feet under.

Stylistically Love Lies Bleeding is quite impressive. While this film is the second feature from Rose Glass, Bleeding is really proving to showcase what Glass is capable of from a directorial standpoint. While her former film Saint Maud was a very confined film which spent a lot of time in a single room, Bleeding really allows Glass to stretch her legs behind the camera. In addition to the intriguing cinematic look the film creates, the camera also frequently utilizes close up shots of things, a key going into a lock, a pay phone’s number buttons and a cassette tape player, for those that remember some of those things. The script too from Glass is engaging, the story is well structured, the tone of the film and her vision for what she wanted to create here with her sophomore effort shines throughout the film’s runtime. Coming in at just under a hour and forty-five minutes, the film teetered on being just a bit too long, this is a perfectly fine hour and a half feature film but it was stretched out an extra ten minutes or so. From an acting perspective, Stewart was good not great, this isn’t among her top tier work that we’ve seen her producing of late. But Stewart’s co-star Katy O’Brian was doing something pretty special with her screen time, I haven’t seen anything she’s worked in before and I think she outshined Stewart in her role as a gym girl trying to get into a body builder competition. But outside of the things I’ve mentioned, this is plain and simple a good movie time. It’s not saying anything deep or trying to be some masterpiece, it’s just looking to entertain and tell a fun story. At the end of the day, that’s perfectly fine with me, I had a good time watching Bleeding and going on a retro adventure with Glass, Stewart, O’Brian and company, and I’m betting that most others will too.

SUMMARY - This film will be a bit polarizing, as I’ve already explained, it’s sexy, it’s weird, it’s wild and ultimately that’s about the most you expect to get from a movie experience in mid March. Dune 2 being a massive exception to that rule, once you’ve watched that film a couple times, you’ll find Love in this latest A24 film Lies in the middle of the New Mexico desert night, Bleeding out.