Love Lies Bleeding movie review (2024) – Roger Ebert

Health club supervisor Lou (Kristen Stewart) is launched along with her hand down a clogged bathroom. She is going to spend numerous the subsequent two hours cleansing up a lot worse messes in Rose Glass’ highly effective “Love Lies Bleeding,” an attractive, brutal, violent, kinetic piece of filmmaking that’s about, nicely, love, lies, and bleeding. It’s a intestine punch a few steroid-using bodybuilder that’s on roids itself, getting bolder and extra cinematically muscular with every subsequent twist. A number of of the daringly formidable punches don’t fully land, particularly in a frenetic remaining act, nevertheless it’s a minor criticism for a movie that confirms that Glass is a serious expertise with an uncompromising imaginative and prescient.

Lou lives in a kind of center of nowhere cities that the American dream forgot. Set on the finish of the prime of the musclebound hero period in 1989, Glass sketches a distant city in New Mexico that appears prefer it actually traps folks in cycles of violence. Lou has a regionally well-known household in that her father Lou Sr. (a splendidly seedy Ed Harris) is principally the city’s crime lord. The proprietor of a gun vary, he’s operating weapons throughout the border, and has been disposing of his enemies in a close-by ravine, presumably even Lou’s mom. Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone) struggles underneath the ache of home abuse by the hands of her terrible husband JJ (a mulleted Dave Franco). Into this vat of lighter fluid drops the flame that’s Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a bodybuilder simply stopping off to coach on her technique to a contest in Las Vegas. She’s like nothing Lou has ever seen. They fall in love, alternating injections of steroids with different kinds of strenuous bodily exercise. The charismatic O’Brian play Jackie like a literal superhero, getting stronger with every shot of both steroids or Lou’s dedication to her, however her Bruce Banner in the end has a darkish aspect too.

At first, “Love Lies Bleeding” seems like a comparatively simple noir with the outsider in Jackie virtually stumbling into selections that may’t be reversed. It’s been in comparison with “Drive” and “Thelma & Louise,” however there’s additionally a little bit of the good “Pink Rock West” and different movies about strangers who get caught within the small city they only wished to spend an evening in. When a surprising and gory act of violence perpetually alters Jackie & Lou’s relationship, “Love Lies Bleeding” actually picks up steam, pushing its characters into more and more tight areas from violence could present the one escape. But it surely consistently swerves left once you count on it to swerve proper, unpredictable in methods that may be invigorating.

A part of that comes from the truth that Rose Glass hasn’t made a standard fashionable noir. She’s made a movie that doesn’t lean into tropes just like the femme fatale as a lot as explode in a brand new path, getting extra surreal and unpredictable, like a steroid journey gone very unsuitable. A few of the narrative explosions of the ultimate act will probably be approach an excessive amount of for some folks, and I do assume that Jackie’s character will get a bit misplaced within the haze of the narrative position she must play, though O’Brian is an actual discover, utilizing her bodily presence in a approach that’s assured with out being showy. Glass avoids the potential to go Refn-esque stylized too, edging into territory that may very well be referred to as over-done however by no means crossing that line. She very deliberately retains the movie gritty, sweaty, and soiled, which tremendously provides to the substance and the stakes. (Main credit score to an outstanding Clint Mansell rating too.)