“LOVE LIES BLEEDING” BY ROSE GLASS

There’s never been a couple quite like Lou (Kristen Stewart) and Jackie (Katy M. O’Brian). Lou leads an ordinary existence in a small town in New Mexico until Jackie, an up-and-coming bodybuilder who is confident, ambitious and sexy as hell, shows up. They fall in love at first sight and dream of a life together. But their relationship provokes violence. Lou’s father (Ed Harris), an arms dealer, holds the reins of a crime syndicate. The couple becomes deeply entangled in the machinations of Lou’s family. They found themselves on a path between lust and violence. “It’s about people trying to change and the power dynamics of very intimate relationships. Only this time it’s, “If you think it’s hard to be lonely, then try being in love,”” says Glass. 

Rose Glass puts her own visual stamp on the western US as a setting, a landscape long mythologized for its raw, eerie beauty. Her 1980s New Mexico is prickly and dirty, with an intense atmosphere. Even as the film shows all the ways a small town can choke off your dreams, it also explodes into surreal moments of shock, bliss and the sublime. The landscape and setting reflect the rugged inner lives of the main characters. Hence, the moments of sudden, explosive surrealism. The previously thematically untouched world of ’80s female bodybuilding Glass chose specifically: “We ultimately set the film in the ’80s because it felt like the ultimate decade of excess, right on the cusp of nihilism of the 90s. It was as if the excess was just reaching its peak before it inevitably collapsed”.

This literally muscular thriller is drenched in sweaty black humor, archetypal characters and genre-bending beyond horror storytelling – all filtered through Glass’s own tempestuous and feminist vision.

“LOVE LIES BLEEDING” features a brilliant ensemble cast, including Oscar-nominated Ed Harris, Dave Franco and Jena Malone. The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and in February it was presented to a standing ovation at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival as part of the Berlinale Special Gala.

Image Courtesy of © A24 and © Anna Kooris