Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
Directed by Rose Glass
Written by Glass and Weronika Tofilska
As soon as the title of “Love Lies Bleeding” splashes across the screen in lurid pink-magenta colors, you know you’re in the world of noir. Not that the film features Expressionist shadows, fedoras, or a wailing trumpet. This is film noir updated to the world of dusty desert shooting ranges, women’s bodybuilding competitions, and drug cartel-stained Albuquerque. You’d be forgiven for getting distracted at first by the love story of Jackie, an unmoored gym rat fleeing a past in Oklahoma, and Lou, a staffer at the gym where she turns up.
Played by Katy O’Brian and Kristen Stewart respectively, Jackie and Lou are star-crossed lesbian lovers, not because of differing pasts or social class, but because of the blood-soaked milieu that Lou has grown up in. Both the gym where she works and the shooting range-and-tavern where Jackie gets a job are owned, as it turns out, by Lou “senior” (as the credits name him) — better known to lesbian Lou as Dad, but I’ll call him by his last name, Crater. Played by Ed Harris as a creepy ghoul who’s part of a gun-smuggling operation out of the shooting range, Crater’s empire has been under suspicion by the FBI for some time. They’re aching to tie him to the gun smuggling, but they don’t even know about the desert canyon — more of a fissure — or what’s at the bottom of it. The only ones who know about that are Lou Sr. — and his daughter.
There’s plenty in that setup for a murder-filled thriller, but for the first third of the movie we’re treated to a hot dyke romance. O’Brian, in a wig that brings to mind the heroine of “Flashdance,” and wearing little more than that character in the strip club scene for much of the film, has the muscled body she hopes to use to win a championship in Las Vegas, and the strength to go with it. She’s a perfect match for the more butch Lou played by Stewart — strong enough to handle Lou physically, feminine enough to play the femme (the wig goes a long way there).
I used the term star-crossed before, but while the body count by the end of the film is high, “Love Lies Bleeding” doesn’t have quite as many murders as a tragedy, nor does it use the classic noir ending where the lovers are separated at the end (a la “The Maltese Falcon,” where Sam Spade tells Brigid O'Shaughnessy “Yes, angel, I’m gonna send you over”). Spoiler: Love wins out in the end. Otherwise this would be another film where lesbians aren’t allowed to live happily ever after, and we can’t have that.
There’s not much more to say about the film. Good job by everyone. Having seen this right after a film about a nun, I’m interested in the previous film, “Saint Maud,” by the same director, Rose Glass.
Special recognition to Anna Baryshnikov for her work as Daisy, a skinny, possibly meth-taking dyke with a pathetic and unrequited crush on Lou. At first, I thought this was the same actor who played Sylvie, the unregulated stoner girl in the wool cap from “Bottoms,” but that was Summer Joy Campbell. (This movie and “Bottoms” would make a great double feature.)
See the resemblance? Anyway, Baryshnikov’s over-the-top performance that pushes the limits of annoying tagalong, at one moment emitting an ingratiating whine, in the next coolly delivering a veiled threat, stands out in a supporting cast made up of Harris, Dave Franco, and Jenna Malone.