The spirit of Jim Thompson takes Thelma and Louise for a ride in Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass’s follow-up to her feature debut, Saint Maud. That was a tortured, angst-ridden tale about the overlap between mental illness and religious belief – with a helluva twist. This is a dark and gruesome story tale about sex, death and bodybuilding with such a small sprinkling of comedy that you might not notice it. But also a twist you won’t see coming.
The above-the-line star is Kristen Stewart, in another of her Joan Jett-style feather-cut-n-jeans roles as the bozo black sheep of a crime family who we meet literally arm deep in turds as she unblocks a backed-up toilet at the gym where she mans the front desk. This is all part of her daily grind. Humour.
Lou’s life is a series of chores – when not skivvying at the gym in her one-horse town she spends her downtime listening to tapes about how to give up smoking while smoking (humour again) – so we understand why she is smitten the moment glamorously beefy Jackie (Katy O’Brian) walks into her world.
Jackie works out on the machines, Lou stealing glances, then the two of them are forced into dealing with some unwanted male attention in the parking lot. United in adversity, they bond further over beer and cigarettes. And soon they are ramming their hands down each other’s pants, something Thelma and Louise never did. Either way a two-against-the-world bond is the outcome.
Jackie is only blowing through this town en route to a big bodybuilding competition out west. Her problem is her short fuse, which black-market growth hormones don’t help. Lou’s is her family – crime boss dad Lou Senior (Ed Harris in hair extensions) and brother-in-law JJ (Dave Franco, good for a change), husband of sister Beth (Jena Malone). JJ’s tendency to beat Beth to bits is the reason why Lou stays in this no-horse town, she explains to Jackie when Jackie tries to coerce her into taking off on a journey across America to where the land hits the sea.
Gunplay, hideous maiming and death will all be dealt before the end credits roll. For Lou, scores to to settle with the family. For Jackie, a bodybuilding competition where she will strike all the poses. What unites these separate realms – separate movies, almost – is the drugs. Supplied by Lou, consumed by Jackie, they’re the catalyst that converts Jackie into an angel of vengeance with roid rage.
Rose Glass has left the grey of the UK behind to make the sort of American movie she watched growing up – of canyons and deserts, bodies rolled up in rugs and dumped in the back of station wagons, trailer-trash crime families, bent sheriffs and violence without consequence, as if she’d taken lots of notes before watching a double bill of No Country for Old Men and The Killer Inside Me and then booked her flight.
Glass abandons the early stabs at humour, which were half-hearted to start with, and largely leaves the sex to one side once it’s been established that Lou and Jackie are getting it on. Instead she edges into increasingly dark territory for one of those tales of escalating mayhem where once the ball is rolling it can only come to rest when most people on screen are dead.
Stewart delivers one of her Kristen-Stewart-poor-white-trash performances, legs agangle, mumbling, gulping, head always angled to catch the planes of her face at their finest. Riveting. And yet she graciously cedes the spotlight to O’Brian, who is the revelation. O’Brian has bodybuilding on her CV and Glass’s decision to get a bodybuilder who could act rather than an actor who could beef up has been vindicated by O’Brian’s tough-tender and plausible performance.
It’s a much more familiar, conventional film than Saint Maud, that’s for certain. An enjoyable exercise in genre stylistics. Clint Mansell does the dark score, Ben Fordesman (Glass’s DP on Saint Maud) the stylishly dark visuals.
Now, having scratched that murderous itch, maybe Glass can get back to being unconventional.
Love Lies Bleeding – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
