At critical moments through Loves Lies Bleeding, an otherwise gritty and grimy film, there will be a surreal instance of apparent bodily mutation to Katy O'Brian's Jackie, an intensely obsessed bodybuilder. They are snippets that have the look of something out of a horror film at first, but are connected intrinsically to moments of emotional extremity, whether it is ecstasy in sex or exuberance in anticipation ...or all-consuming rage at an injustice. They are also very importantly connected to steroids, which Jackie becomes hooked on in an effort to achieve her ideal body image. The movie's opening features a collage of rhythmic close-ups of exercising male bodies, before honing in on Kristen Stewart's Lou -scrawny but tomboyish- cleaning out the grungy toilet at the back of the gym she manages. There is a relationship between those flashes of an idealized male form and the divergently aestheticized bodies of the two women at the heart of this movie.
It's a kind of provocative visual language that puts one in mind of Bound, another lesbian-themed revenge thriller that had compelling things to say about gender and sexuality over a conventional, albeit highly suspenseful, crime premise. But that is a movie which is too easy a comparison point -indeed the first thing any film fan will note about Love Lies Bleeding is the resemblance it bears to the Wachowski Sisters influential debut. This is not a debut, though it is the mere second film from director Rose Glass of Saint Maud. And while certainly she owes more than a little inspiration to Bound, her take on a lot of the same subject matter is very much its’ own, fascinating for its imagery as much as for its story.
Set in rural Oklahoma in 1989, it is a premise with as much romance as action, as it depicts the spontaneous relationship between a local gym operator and an aspiring bodybuilder passing through town. It is an immediate and intensely physical attraction that soon evolves into Jackie temporarily moving in with Lou and the pair casually taking steroids together. Ed Harris plays Lou’s estranged father who runs a shooting range and is something of a local crime kingpin, and Dave Franco is her violently abusive brother-in-law -concern for her sister Beth (Jena Malone) and her children is all that keeps Lou in the area. And it is something that Jackie does in relation to all of this that spirals the pair into extreme circumstances and danger.
Even as this alters the course of their drama, the driving motivation for Jackie at least remains firm, and Glass hones in intently on her body obsession as a counterpoint to the stakes elsewhere in the film. Hell, Jackie even ignores those stakes to hitchhike her way to Vegas in the midst of an extremely dire situation for her to enter into her much anticipated competition. Yet this isn’t merely to prescribe vanity to the character, Glass has a sharper point to make about the commodification, even fetishization, of unconventional feminine body types and how they relate to sexuality and personal fulfilment with one’s own body. Neither Lou nor Jackie ascribe to conventional femininity -indeed their aesthetics equate arguably to 80s stereotypes about lesbians. And while Glass hints at the ways men relate to this, what’s more important is how they relate to each other. She emphasizes Jackie’s athletic power, Lou’s domineering sexual techniques, makes a point of the lustful attraction that starts it all -informed entirely by their respective physicalities, and which Glass identifies no shallowness in. She and the actresses showcase well a compelling sexual and romantic dynamic through distinctly composed love scenes and elaborate shows in their casual relationship -the pull-ups Jackie does while hanging in Lou’s bedroom for instance.
It translates an exhilarating chemistry, especially in slight details and subtle emotions. Both actresses are great, though while Stewart is superb as the guarded introvert with a passionate fierceness kept mostly suppressed, it is O'Brian who is the revelation of the piece. Her raw ambition and wild compulsiveness is utterly captivating to watch. How she plays both Jackie's harrowing fury and profound psychological unease, especially around those body issues (there are definite connotations of dysmorphia -the film could easily be read as transgender metaphor) is matched by her dedicated, open, and impressively vulnerable physical transformation.
The slickness of it exists in relief to a world that is inherently grungy and decrepit. Even Jackie's show in Vegas is marked by hot lights and cigar smoke, amplifying a sordid pageantry to it all. Love Lies Bleeding is a movie that revels in its grotesque small town underbelly -the dismal filth of the gym, a local cafe, the hospital, even Lou's apartment. The roads are rough, the lamplights flicker, and most of the cars are grubby pick-ups. Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), a pitiably clueless local with a deep infatuation for Lou, has noticeably grimy and blackened teeth. Lou’s father, in spite of his fortune, wears shabby clothes keeps his thin hair long but for the baldness on top -making for an image that looks goofy in the trailer on his gun range, frightening in Lou’s red-tinted flashes to a traumatic past. The place, the crimes and danger around everything feels tangible, all the more claustrophobic to Lou and Jackie’s urgent escape.
Glass plays well with that urgency, and as the tension escalates, that anxiety as well. Impulse drives so much of the story, dictating its gravity and bringing about a few vividly gripping twists and turns. It is reverberated in the filmmaking itself and Glass’s daunting though ultimately cathartic choices. What must be understood is the righteousness to the inciting incident, and everything that comes out of it; the testing of Jackie’s dependence and uncontrollable aggression as well as Lou’s desperation is eminently articulated through this feeling. Lou and Jackie’s war against the criminal appendages of Lou’s family is also in its way a proxy for their conflict with the hetero-patriarchal culture they are suffocated by in this feculent isolated world. Lou’s poor sister Beth is resigned to it, comfortable in it, even amid all the abuse she receives -Lou’s own entrapment only comes to an end by attacking it. Jackie just needed to take the first step for her, and in turn Lou is Jackie’s salvation as well.
Inevitably it comes back to that fixed interest in the body -Jackie’s specifically, which in addition to its aesthetics acts as a weapon all throughout and no more so than in the climax, expressed psychologically rather than literally. More than a resolution it leaves you with a stark picture of the emotional enormity of her personal physical fulfilment, capped with a sense of hard-earned psychological ease. And it is a very distinct picture at that to carry with it significant power. Certainly Love Lies Bleeding demonstrates that Rose Glass is not a filmmaker to be ignored, signalling her prominent creative voice alongside the excellence of Katy O’Brian and continued remarkable consistency of Kristen Stewart as artistic commodities well worth encouraging.
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