‘Love Lies Bleeding’ overview: Kristen Stewart Is Pure Magnetism in extremely-Violent Neo-Noir Romance

When a magnificently gnarled Ed Harris, donning stringy Argus Filch hair and chomping on a horned beetle in a moment of psychotic rage is removed from the weirdest aspect in a movie, you comprehend you're in for a wild event. That's what Brit director Rose Glass can provide in Love Lies Bleeding, a lesbian neo-noir drenched in brooding nightscapes, violent crime and more hardcore KStew cool than has ever been packaged in any such amazing concentrate. severely, is there any person who doesn't are looking to watch Kristen Stewart flicking back a greasy shag, using an historical pickup and chain-smoking in grubby tank tops?

Glass immediately based herself as a unique ability along with her 2021 debut, Saint Maud, an audacious shot of undiluted terror and spiraling insanity that introduced an idiosyncratic new voice in horror. She follows with a swerve into romantic, sexual and physical obsession that fearlessly keeps upping the ante on simply how intense it'll go. That makes it absolutely on brand for A24.

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while here's very a good deal a daring original, it taps into a tradition of lurid pulp videos that revel of their brutal excesses, from herbal Born Killers and authentic Romance through drive correct on as much as final yr's Infinity Pool. There's a splash of physique horror and even a sprinkling of sci-fi fable that plays like a steroid-addled homage to assault of the 50 Foot woman. And its depiction of the monomaniacal pursuit of bodybuilding excellence is perhaps much more unhinged than magazine dreams, the 2023 Sundance conversation-starter whose release changed into derailed by megastar Jonathan Majors' domestic violence case.

if you're trying to find restraint, appear somewhere else. Love Lies Bleeding is loads of film. It makes the nonetheless-wonderful queen of lesbian romantic crime thrillers, bound, seem just about demure.

Written by Glass and fellow filmmaker Weronika Tofilska and set in the decade of too-muchness, the 1980s, the film casts Stewart as Lou, first seen up to her elbows in a blocked rest room on the gym where she doubles as manager and solo renovation crew. The arresting opening photos courtesy of ace cinematographer Ben Fordesman (who additionally shot Saint Maud) take in the urban spread of a brand new Mexico town and the blanket of stars above earlier than closing in on the late-evening health routines of a decidedly male clientele, all of this set to the propulsive sounds of Clint Mansell's seductively punchy digital ranking.

Lou's lifestyles is ready to be turned upside-down with the aid of Jackie (Katy O'Brian), a bodybuilder with a murky previous in Oklahoma. Blowing into city on her technique to an upcoming bodybuilder contest in Vegas, Jackie needs a job quickly, so she gives skeevy JJ (Dave Franco in an epically awful mullet) a sweaty quickie within the returned of his vehicle before discovering a spot to sleep under a bridge. JJ hooks her up along with his boss at the local capturing latitude, Lou Sr. (Harris), the place she starts waitressing for gun nuts.

Lou Sr. is Lou's estranged father, a malevolent creep who collects unique bugs and — as counseled in flashes of violent imagery — has a heritage of homicide, dumping bodies in a rocky desert ravine. just to preserve issues within the family, JJ is Lou Sr.'s son-in-legislation, given to smacking around his wife Beth (Jena Malone). Lou is fiercely defensive of her sister, maddened through Beth's unwavering devotion to the husband who at last lands her in hospital with a face banged up past awareness.

in the meantime, Jackie has caught Lou's eye on the health club. A shot of steroids within the butt serves as a prelude to their first kiss, adopted by way of the first of many bouts of steamy sex. Lou offers Jackie with a spot to reside, falling difficult before she is aware of tons about her. but violence crashes their romantic idyll. As Jackie gets hooked on 'roids and increasingly passionate about her popping veins and bulging muscular tissues — Fordesman's closeup photographs of these in motion are like an extraterrestrial landscape — Lou finds herself more than as soon as disposing of our bodies and cleaning up crime scenes.

To additional complicate the situation, Lou Sr. is the goal of an FBI investigation that may additionally prove constructive to his daughter, whose own darkish past is step by step revealed. And Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), a druggy occasional hookup besotted with Lou, stumbles onto some probably incriminating competencies that she error for romantic leverage.

This variety of hyperviolent bloodbath is commonly the domain of men, so it's a welcome change to have girls on the center and a festering father-daughter tangle in location of the typical son — however Glass has no interest in making any class of feminist remark. She punctuates the film with startling set-pieces, none of which will also be described without spoilers. but Jackie's eventual look on the Vegas competitors stage, when her huge steroid consumption has made her spin out of control, begins a crescendo of nasty gonzo moments while additionally touchdown her within the clutches of Lou Sr.

O'Brian actually looks the part, and the intercourse scenes are sizzling, however her appearing chops are too green to make her an amazing in shape for the effortless charisma of Stewart. She's perpetually watchable, carrying the film with commanding grunge style and offsetting Lou's hard exterior with a molten heart and mounting nervousness because the circumstance gets stickier. Harris makes a great villain, Franco is vile sleaze personified and a platinum-blonde Malone is distressing as a wife unwilling to surrender her love for JJ regardless of life-threatening accidents.

Love Lies Bleeding is a hallucinatory go back and forth down the darkest byways of Americana. It's too blunt to be as unsettling as Saint Maud however will depart nobody detached.

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