Courtesy of Sundance Institute
PARK CITY, Utah—A hot-blooded crime story whose affectations outweigh its subversions, Love Lies Bleeding is faux-noir that finds Rose Glass struggling to strike an authentically sleazy, sensual chord. As with her prior Saint Maud, the English writer/director delivers quite a few grim and grisly sights with her sophomore outing, all while putting a sapphic feminist spin on a traditional genre tale. Yet despite its explicit flair and committed performances from Kristen Stewart as a middle-of-nowhere loner and Katy O’Brian as the bodybuilder who drifts into her town, her bed and her family’s twisted hostilities, the film’s provocations are strained and its desperate passions a pose.
Premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Love Lies Bleeding opens by descending into a hellish ravine, then turning upwards toward the heavenly nighttime stars, and finally settling in-between them on a fitness center where Lou (Stewart) is busy unclogging a toilet as blonde-haired Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov) pesters her with date requests and unsuccessful attempts to fool around. Glass situates us in this grungy 1989 milieu by fixating on bulging biceps, chests, nipples, and veins getting pumped up by patrons who are supposed to be encouraged by signs on the wall blaring motivational bromides. Between rejecting Daisy and listening to audio tapes designed to help her quit smoking, Lou is a woman fighting to practice restraint. That’s complicated, however, by the arrival of Jackie (O’Brian), who struts into Lou’s workplace with tremendous confidence and glistening muscles that cause her to immediately lose her self-control.
Having departed her native Oklahoma in vague disgrace, Jackie is passing through this dusty community on her way to Las Vegas, where she intends to compete in a bodybuilding competition. On her first night in the area, she screws JJ (Dave Franco) in his Camaro and subsequently sleeps beside the highway. After a workout, Jackie responds to Lou’s flirtation and punches (and takes a retaliatory punch from) a bruiser who mocks her for spending time with the “dyke.” That night, Lou takes Jackie back to her dingy place for some sweaty and vigorous sex. During this and their later carnal encounters, Stewart and O’Brian knock around bedrooms and do dirty things in bathrooms, but they’re both trying too hard to be fervently X-rated, undercutting their mild yin-yang chemistry and turning the material’s erotic elements labored.