LOVE LIES BLEEDING – Review

Ready for a cinematic “walk on the wild side”? Perhaps something in the film noir category, but not similar to something you’d run across on one of those nostalgia streaming channels. Maybe something set just before the turn of the century rather than the decade post-WWII. Sure, this new flick is a crime thriller involving multiple murders, but that’s just one aspect. Let’s see, there’s a big (truly huge) daughter/father conflict so it’s a family drama. And it’s certainly a romance ala’ girl meets girl. Oh, and one of them is seeking fame in the competitive world of female bodybuilding events. Now, that’s really different and certainly unique. Mix all those genres and subplots together and you get an insight into the provocative title, LOVE LIES BLEEDING.

Oh, the backdrop year is in the 20th century, way back in 1989. We first meet lonely Lou (Kristen Stewart) who runs a gym catering to weightlifters in a dusty New Mexico border town. After a night of unclogging toilets and dealing with a spacey clingy ex-girlfriend named Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), she heads back to the dingy apartment she shares with her cat Happy Meal. Meanwhile, across the tracks, JJ (Dave Franco) is “hiring” a new waitress for the tavern at the gun range business he manages…in the back of his car. He tells the muscular statuesque brunette, Jackie (Katy O’Brian) that she can start tomorrow. She leaves the parking lot to sleep under the highway overpass. The next morning JJ introduces her to the gun range owner, his father-in-law, the surly Lou Sr. (Ed Harris). Eventually, Jackie heads over to Crater Gym where she encounters Lou. The two immediately form a connection and spend the night (at Lou’s pad, natch’). Jackie insists that she’ll soon be moving on to a big body-building event in Vegas as soon as she makes enough cash for the trip. A few nights later Lou and Jackie have a most awkward dinner date with Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone) and her abusive spouse, JJ! Lou is furious that he’s smacking around her sister. But he doesn’t stop and Beth ends up in a coma at the local hospital. After an uncomfortable reunion with Lou Sr. (they are estranged, to say the least) something…happens. And soon the lovers are nearly in panic mode. Can Lou stay ahead of the FBI agents who are pressuring her for info on her papa’s shady operations? And what about those “off-brand” muscle “enhancers” that Lou gave Jackie? Things are about to get much hotter in that sleepy desert burg…

Add another interesting character performance to the already impressive resume of Ms. Stewart. In the opening act, Lou is a take-no-crap (unless she’s clearing the commode) tough gal whose tough exterior masks her lonely solitary life and very dark past. That all changes when she spots Jackie her “warrior angel’ across the gym floor. Stewart shows us that a spark has been ignited in those “half-mast” eyes. Later on, she’s almost a whirling dervish as she scrambles to “clean and dispose’ all the while Stewart lets us see that Lou’s brain has shifted into “high gear”. The real breakout role may belong to her “ideal” Jackie played with great energy and flair by relative screen newcomer O’Brian, who was one of the few highlights of the last ANT-MAN epic. Jackie is “laser-focused on her sports goal, though she’s elated by the prospect of real love with Lou. But that is somewhat short-circuited by the “boosters’ that spiral her into a scary “roid’ rage’ while dropping her into a nightmare-like netherworld. And even as she’s posing in front of a mirror, there’s still a child-like vulnerability. The “third wheel” of this love “triangle is the manic white-hot mess that is Daisy who Baryshnikov plays as a distracted child who demands attention while engaging in passive-aggressive manipulation. She’s trouble, but is merely an annoying “jack-in-the-box’ compared to the sadistic cruelty of the two dudes hovering over them. Franco is a sniveling mullet-sporting bully as the weasily JJ, who needs the protection of the king of the “wolf pack”, Lou Sr, given a constant sneer by the bombastic Harris who resembles a heavy metal Satan with long curtains of hair framing his scowling pate. They’re “bad dude” and super-bad dude”.

The director and co-writer, with Weronika Tofilska, Rose Glass has crafted a low-rent, hard-scrabble fable that incorporates lust, love, longing, and brutal revenge while taking many unexpected and often “out there” twists and turns. She makes great use of a vibrant color scheme, switching from a warm “lit by headlights” glow in the wee hours to the shimmering, blazing crimson of a blood-soaked hellscape. It’s all punctuated with a grim “gallows humor” echoing the criminal eccentrics of Tarantino and the Coens mixed with more than a dash of the heroines of BOUND. The big “dividing point” for many viewers will be the sharp detour into “fantasy-land” in the big finale showdown, but after the lean, taut storytelling most will probably embrace and may even be thrilled by the audacity of it. Somehow Glass gets all the diverse elements to jell while making us truly invested in these two unlikely lovers, again played superbly by Stewart and O’Brian. The desert locales project a sense of sun-baked decay while the period is well represented (no cell phones, but lots of answering machines). More adventurous filmgoers will enjoy the “totally-jacked” trip taken when LOVE LIES BLEEDING.

3.5 Out of 4

LOVE LIES BLEEDING is now playing in select theatres