‘Love Lies Bleeding’ movie review: Kristen Stewart shines in Rose Glass’ sophomore sapphic nightmare

On the coronary heart of the movie is Stewart’s mesmerizing efficiency as Lou, the native lesbian fitness center supervisor with a couple of demons within the closet. Stewart effortlessly captures the character’s inner battle, together with her staggered supply and brooding presence, delivering a tour-de-force efficiency that cements her standing as one of the vital versatile actors of her technology.

Starring throughout Stewart, O’Brian shines as Jackie, matching that riveting depth as an bold bodybuilder whose quest for perfection leads her down a treacherous path of self-destruction. As Jackie’s relationship with Lou intensifies, O’Brian navigates the complexities of their infatuation whereas pushing her physicality to alarming ranges below a rabid, steroid-induced trance.

Cinematographer Ben Fordesman strikes a visible stability with sweat-dripped close-ups of throbbing muscle tissue, with a lurking play within the shadows that’s characteristically Glass. This unsettling imagery is complemented by editor Mark Cities’ visceral urgency that enhances the gore-fest to new heights, whereas veteran composer Clint Mansell’s ethereal synths are methodically interspersed with moments of pure sonic terror that render the movie a holistic sensory expertise that’s as intoxicating as it’s unnerving.

Followers of Glass can be fast to identify thematic parallels with the filmmaker’s 2019 horror debut. Glass weaponises ache and pleasure as two sides of the identical coin, blurring the traces between the 2 to disconcerting ranges of satisfaction. Whereas the eponymous Maud from Glass’s earlier tryst with mutilation is fully satisfied that self-harm is the last word type of penance as she reaffirms, “By no means waste your ache,” O’Brian’s Jackie faucets into the all-too-familiar gym-rat rhetoric that extols the virtues of “no ache, no achieve” till it chews her up and spits her out, every bicep curl a horrifying squelch of delusion.

But, maybe the movie’s best triumph is that it’s homosexual as hell.

Glass mines the queer cultural archives, weaving in references and themes which are unfiltered and provocative. From Stewart’s lingering gaze to steamy intercourse montages set to ‘80s queer icons, the movie is a wild, uncut (or about as a lot as Indian screens would allow) love letter to queer rebel that’s bursting with the exhilaration of low cost retro porno.

The movie attracts to a satisfying climax — with a suggestive barrel stuffed down a creepy, cult-like Ed Harris’s throat and the 2 sapphic monsters Thelma & Louis-ing off into the sundown. Rose Glass’s sophomore outing below the A24 banner virtually had us fooled. Whereas deceptively dubbed a romance-thriller, Love Lies Bleeding rings sonorous with the British filmmaker’s distinct body-horror sensibilities that explicates her standing as one of the vital unique horror icons in modern cinema at the moment.

Love Lies Bleeding is presently working in theatres