I saw Love Lies Bleeding under the best possible circumstances: stoned and naked on a couch with a highly aroused post-menopausal woman. (Forget the myths! Menopause doesn’t have to kill libido.)
Is that gratuitous? So is Love Lies Bleeding. This is not a movie to see straight – in any sense of the word. It’s sapphic, queer, and dedicated to forcibly obliterating the male gaze.
For her instantly-iconic Rolling Stone profile, Kristen Stewart said “I want to do the gayest fucking thing you’ve ever seen in your life.” That describes Love Lies Bleeding to a tee. Director/co-writer Rose Glass has made a movie as oiled-up, sweaty, and dangerously horny as its two protagonists.
Wildly subversive, too. Love Lies Bleeding turns expectations upside down. It fucks with your head, your heart, and your genitals, sometimes simultaneously.
So What Happens in Love Lies Bleeding?
Kristen Stewart stars as Lou, who manages a gym in rural New Mexico, 1989. Her life seems to be going nowhere. Her only relationship is with her sister Beth (Jena Malone) and Beth’s abusive husband JJ (Dave Franco, in full 80s dirtbag drag). Lou hates JJ, but stays ostensibly to protect Beth. She rejects the desperate, obsessive advances of local methhead Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov) with bored resignation.
You get the sense that that’s pretty much how Lou expects the rest of her life to go.
That’s when amateur bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian) wanders in, hitchhiking her way to Las Vegas for a competition that she hopes will make her career. (Jackie explicitly states that she “likes both,” so let’s hear it for bi representation, y’all). They fall deep into lust during an eroticized steroid injection, with “Stars Fell on Alabama” playing in the background. And that’s before shit even gets weird.
Lou starts supplying Jackie with performance-enhancers to prepare for the competition, and for a brief moment (a montage, really), it’s all uninhibited sex, queer-coded syringes, and horny flexing. Even when it’s good, though, there’s an undercurrent of menace. When Lou waves a lighter at Jackie’s toes to encourage her to keep doing pull-ups, then sucks the toes she burned, you know Lou’s got a dark streak.
Lou is estranged from her gun-running, drug-smuggling father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris, chilling as ever). But as in all crime movies, her past is always following close behind. The plot really goes into motion when JJ puts Beth in the hospital after a vicious beating. Jackie, fueled by roid-rage and channeling Lou’s frustration, takes matters into her own hands and beats JJ to death.
From there, the Coen-esque plot is a series of double-crosses from all angles as Lou and Lou Sr. try to outmaneuver each other and keep the heat off – in the form of the FBI agents following Lou around. Lou sets up Lou Sr; Lou Sr sets up Jackie; Daisy sets up Lou; Lou Sr sets up Lou; and nobody gets out clean.
Uuuum – Okay, But What is Love Lies Bleeding About?
Let’s be real fucking clear – Love Lies Bleeding is not a sexy romp. Glass juxtaposes eroticism with startling violence and grotesque body horror (shades of Cronenberg and Lynch), and the balance shifts heavily toward the latter two as the movie goes on.
That’s to say nothing of the ending, which barrels straight into sci-fi/fantasy territory – and, honestly, almost lost me.
Spoiler alert for a movie that came out months ago:
In the climax, Jackie literally hulks out – growing to 50 feet tall and crushing Lou Sr. to save Lou’s life from her own father. Now, if you’re like me, you like your crime dramas grounded and plausible. But by that point, you’ve made it through some seriously surreal shit (like Jackie vomiting up Lou’s entire body in a steroid- and stress-induced hallucination).
If you’re still invested in the characters – and you’re high enough, and cuddled up with a like-minded companion – you might be able to let it go.
The performances keep you invested in the characters. Ed Harris is rightfully a legend, and Kristen Stewart is rapidly getting there. But Katy O’Brian and Anna Baryshnikov are revelations.
The story doesn’t ask O’Brian to do much but be mysterious and sexy, but she finds depths in the character. She makes Jackie more than a cipher for Lou to impose her desires on, taking her through lust, confidence, rage, and terror in ways that always feel true.
And Baryshnikov’s Daisy is a nightmare brought to life – at once a clinging, inescapable goblin and a tragic, all-too-real human twisted by the cruelty around her. (Who fucked up her teeth? I’m guessing Lou Sr’s drugs.) Every time Daisy popped up, I thought of “Daisy Bell” – the internet’s creepiest song. It fits Baryshnikov’s mixture of childish cheerfulness and underlying malevolence. Daisy’s a little more than half-crazy, and I don’t think it’s love that did it.
But what’s the point of it all?
Look, Midlife Queer has a mission – giving a voice to LGBTQ+ people who are finding themselves later in life. Does a queer sexual awakening in your 30s count? Considering the themes – family obligation, escaping the past, being true to yourself – I’m giving it the pass.
Sure, she’s not coming out to a spouse in middle age, or figuring out dating after a long straight-presenting relationship.
But Lou lives under repression and oppression – from herself, from her past, from her family, and especially from her father. Lou’s burden is that she literally knows where the bodies are buried, because she obviously helped bury some of them. She’s way too familiar with how to dispose of corpses, as matter-of-fact (if grossed out) about it as when she’s unclogging a toilet in the opening.
Expectation weighs heavy on Lou, and the movie. In their final confrontation, Lou accuses Lou Sr. of murdering her mother. His answer: “Your mom left because she couldn’t stand being a wife to me. And a mother to you.” When Lou spits out “I’m nothing like you,” Lou Sr. answers, almost compassionately, “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”
Have you felt trapped by the expectations of others? By the assumptions of people who think they know you? By the fear that who you’ve been in the past will define who you are forever?
Then you get what Rose Glass is putting down. And maybe you sympathize with Lou’s bloody quest to change her life and become her own person.
On the other hand, the last thing we see – before Lou and Jackie dance in silhouette alongside the end credits – is Lou strangling Daisy, the last witness, in cold blood and dumping the body in the desert. So maybe Lou Sr. has a point.
Whatever. Those crazy kids are gonna do great in 90s California.
Related:
