Love Lies Bleeding and all the images you see in this review are owned by A24
Directed by Rose Glass
Somehow we got two lesbian crime movies released within weeks of each other, and while I sadly didn’t get a chance to see Drive-Away Dolls, at least not yet, this one became a top priority for me when I saw the trailers. Kristen Stewart is already a good indicator of quality for me and A24 has a mostly solid track record, so the math added up, and I went to check it out as soon as I had a window in my schedule. Was this grimy slice of eighties mischief worth getting excited for, or is this a situation where all the right pieces are there, but it just doesn’t come together in the end? Let’s find out!!
One night in Nowhere Middle America, a woman comes into town with big dreams and even bigger muscles. Her name is Jackie (Katy O’Brian) and she catches the eye of the local gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) who gives her a place to stay and the two fall madly in love. Sadly, the Beatles were incorrect when they said love is all you need, and their lives start to encroach on their whirlwind love affair as Lou’s estranged dad (Ed Harris) is a local gun runner always on the outskirts of their lives and Lou herself is not exactly the perfect partner for someone who’s been through as much as Jackie has. It all comes to a head when Lou’s sister (Jena Malone) is in serious trouble, and Jackie’s instincts lead her down a dark path that will drag Lou and her entire family down with her. Can Lou keep her love life and her family in one piece despite barely keeping her own life intact? What does Lou’s dad want from her, and what does he want from Jackie as well? Seriously, if there’s this much drama around, why don’t you just move? It’s the eighties! People could actually afford that back then!
There are movies that I appreciate more than I enjoy, which might be giving the game away right off the bat, but I think there are some fascinating ideas at play here as well as a creative verve that you always hope to find in A24 productions. It’s downbeat and nasty in a way that will make your skin crawl, while also giving you glimpses of hope and joy that makes the tragedy of it all cut that much deeper. Kristen Stewart has been on the upswing for a decade now, with this being one of her more nuanced performances, but it’s relative newcomer Katy O’Brian who has the much more challenging and daring role, playing someone who is both a ruthless predator and a horribly damaged victim. She’s constantly being led astray by a world that wants little more than to exploit her, and yet the amount of blood and heartbreak left in her wake is too great to ignore even in this godforsaken world of crass Eighties Exceptionalism. Their chemistry together is what drives the movie, and the actors have a solid rapport with each other as two broken people who can’t help but break a little more in each other’s arms. The rest of the movie is rather straightforward with Ed Harris in the thankless role as the Big Bad who’s on hand to drive the plot, but the film gives him enough personality and hints at a deeper pathos that he’s compelling to watch whenever he turns up.
The movie reminds me of other bleak crime films like Killer Joe and Pain & Gain, and it’s in these comparisons that I found myself wrestling with the movie’s themes and is what will perhaps separate me from other critics who will find what I’m about to say praiseworthy where I see it as something I simply did not enjoy. Movies like Killer Joe and Pain & Gain afford a certain distance from the characters we follow; inviting us to observe them through these trials without getting too far into their headspace. You don’t sympathize with the Smith family’s selfish goals that lead to them getting in way over their heads, and you are actively cheering against Daniel Lugo, who’s just a pathetic brute with delusions of grandeur. Here, the nihilism is just as pronounced, but we aren’t given that space to, in some ways, emotionally guard ourselves from the tragic realities of the situation. It’s interesting that an ending can be viewed as a triumph when it’s someone else’s tragedy; all dependent on the degree of empathy. This movie does a great job of engendering empathy for its two leads given how the people around them slowly eroded their lives into little more than a desperate struggle for survival, yet it plays out like a more traditional Lousy Criminals movie; one that doesn’t ask you to sympathize with its protagonists. This combination proves to be an interesting one, but for me, I thought it was a little overwhelming.
I’m not a fan of seeing characters I can empathize with go through the ringer with such ruthless abandon, and there usually has to be something more to the movie for it to work for me. Here, there’s some decent theming about eighties culture and how love makes fools of us all, but I was far too anxious for the second half of it to say that I was truly enjoying it, and the ending didn’t have the kind of catharsis for me to leave the theater satisfied. Again, this feels mostly intentional, and I can understand audiences that will eat up such an unrelentingly bleak story, but it’s not my cup of tea and I hope I’ve done a decent job of explaining why. It gets a strong recommendation from me, with the caveat that this is a rough sit. If you can appreciate its grim niche, then there are few films that do it this well; it’s just not a niche I’ve ever felt bad about being left out of.
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