By Seth Lukas Hynes
Love Lies Bleeding
Starring Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian and Ed Harris
Rated MA15+
4.5/5
Directed by Rose Glass, Love Lies Bleeding is a surreal, genre-bending romantic thriller.
In 1989, Lou (Kristen Stewart), a gym manager, falls in love with Jackie (Katy O’Brian), an ambitious bodybuilder, but the couple are quickly pulled into a criminal underworld.
Stewart cements her status as an enthralling character actor, and the Amazonian O’Brian balances gentleness and vulnerability with growing rage and a slipping hold on reality.
The droning electronic score enhances the seedy atmosphere, and the camerawork frames the human body as sensual and grotesque – sometimes both at once.
Lou and Jackie’s sweet relationship is stretched to breaking point as good intentions go south and the traumatic past Lou tried to escape reasserts itself.
Love Lies Bleeding grips the viewer with an intensely morally grey landscape – psychopaths showing kindness, a blackmailing manic pixie dream girl, love and cruelty coexisting – and a taut plot that tightens unbearably toward the end.
Love Lies Bleeding’s style has Lynchian notes, with its vibe of heightened reality, moments of body horror and several scenes that pay clear tribute to Blue Velvet and Lost Highway, but still feels fresh and bold, and Ed Harris’s Lou Sr. is like a subtler, more scheming take on Blue Velvet villain Frank Booth.
In 2024, I described Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night as the best David Lynch movie that Lynch didn’t make, and Love Lies Bleeding reveals Glass as another worthy successor to Lynch.
Comparing this with 2024’s other lesbian crime caper, Love Lies Bleeding is more macabre and compelling, and Drive-Away Dolls is lighter, brighter and more fun.
A touching but confronting and extremely tense thriller with dashes of horror and dark comedy, Love Lies Bleeding is playing in select Victorian cinemas.
