It's set in 1989 in grunge rural Nevada: a backdrop for sex, murder and female bodybuilding.
There was a time, in the '90s, when independent film noir thought it was fashionable to imitate the elements of '40s thrillers: dark shadows, Venetian blinds, and "sneaky" femme fatales. But a true film noir never looks back; it is always moving forward, towards new varieties of desire and fear. “Love Lies Bleeding” is like that. It is the second feature film directed by Rose Glass, the British director of “Saint Maud” (2019), and although it is made with a powerful sense of style, there is nothing retro or mannered about it.
Director: Rose Glass
Writers: Rose Glass, Weronika Tofilska
Stars: Anna Baryshnikov, Kristen Stewart, Dave Franco
It's set in a small desert town in rural grunge New Mexico in 1989, and from the opening moments, which take place in the warehouse gym where Lou (Kristen Stewart) works hard as a manager, the film gives you a taste of Western sleaze. . as surely as Mailer's “The Executioner's Song” did.
As Lou, Kristen Stewart has straight, messy hair that falls into cropped bangs and a mullet by default, and she is thin and desperate-looking. Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), a sexy mimosa, approaches him for a date after work, Lou turns her down and we can tell why. He sometimes sleeps with Daisy, but now she's waiting for something, someone, to wake her up. She (she smokes like a chimney and is trying to quit). Stewart invests the role with a hungry hunger, stripping away her normally cold facade to give the film a center charged with vulnerability.
Her wake-up call comes in the form of Jackie (Katy O'Brian), a homeless woman from Oklahoma who shows up at the gym to work out. Jackie is not your everyday bum. She is a bodybuilder, with thick arms and six-pack abs, and it's not just the muscles that stand out; So does her smile from coming here, framed by a mop of curls. We first see her in the back seat of a car, with a skeeve named JJ (Dave Franco) hitting her from behind. But for bisexual Jackie, this is mostly transactional. JJ has promised to get her a job, and she does, at the local shooting range. Her communion with Lou, on the other hand, is pure warmth, with the promise of something more prepared with eggs the next morning. We know it's real when Lou gives Jackie a gift she would never receive: a box full of steroids.
Film noir tends to be about two things: compulsive love and the crimes that get in its way. Lou and Jackie go out to dinner with Lou's sister Beth (Jena Malone) and her husband, who turns out to be JJ. He also has a mullet: a real showstopper, with long stringy locks down the back that in no way match the short mop on top. He's a jerk, but the real problem with him is that he beats his wife. Lou has known this for a long time and continues to offer vague threats about it.
But then JJ crosses a line. Beth lands in the hospital, with the left side of her face so cut and swollen that she looks like Elephant Woman. (The makeup, like many details in “Love Lies Bleeding,” is intensely realistic.) We assume, because good neo-noirs like “A Simple Plan” and “Nocturnal Animals” have encouraged us to assume, that Lou and Jackie will make the decision . take this situation into their own hands and commit a crime that they will spend the rest of the movie trying to hide from the police.
That's a little of what happens. But “Love Lies Bleeding” creates a scene with its own extravagant originality. Jackie is injecting herself with steroids and, unbeknownst to us, they are beginning to affect not only her body but her mind as well.
After going to JJ's house, she doesn't just beat him up; She kills him by crushing his face until she has no face left. (When we finally see what she looks like, the image seems inspired by the most horrifying moment in Gaspar Noé's “Irreversible.”) JJ deserved retribution, but has Jackie gone crazy? It may be so. Which raises the stakes in a crazy and fascinating way.
“Love Lies Bleeding” starts out lean and mean, then slowly and steadily becomes more delirious. The other main character is Lou's estranged father, Lou Sr., played by Ed Harris with a shock of long, wispy hair framing his furrowed face and bald head to make it look like a creepy skull. Lou Sr. runs the shooting range, but he's actually a gangster connected to everything. Lou hasn't seen him in a dozen years, but when it comes time to dispose of JJ's body, he thinks he'll do it by dumping it in the canyon outside of town. which serves as a cemetery for Lou Sr.'s hitmen. This is a not so simple plan and is destined not to work.
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