‘Love Lies Bleeding’ Sundance 2024 Review: Romance and Gore
I use the word propulsive a lot. I always mean it, though I’d understand if the frequency with which I apply it to any new review of mine would be met with some skepticism. Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding is propulsive. Aggressively, diabolically so. Glass follows up the 2019 sensation Saint Maud with a lesbian, bodybuilding, crime fantasy, body horror, Lynchian saga. I could go on, though hopefully you get the gist of just how out there, how unrestrained Glass’ sophomore feature is.
The full thrust of Love Lies Bleeding is difficult to detail without considerable spoilers, though suffice to say, the narrative orbits around Kristen Stewart’s gym manager Lou and her burgeoning relationship with bodybuilder Jackie (an incredible Katy O’Brien). Their relationship vacillates between tenderness and self-indulgence, the collective relief of having found their colloquial person eroding any sense of right and wrong the longer they see each other.
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The synopsis details enough, teasing a European version of rural Americana (Glass herself noted during a Q&A the original script was set in Scotland) and Lou’s family of criminals. Inevitably, both she and Jackie find themselves in the midst of it, combatting unsavory characters in pursuit of private, singular dreams and the shared goal of simply being together.
The supporting cast ranges from the sympathetic (Jena Malone’s Beth, considerably underutilized here) to the frustratingly miscast (Dave Franco’s JJ, still too 21 Jump Street to convincingly play a spousal abuser). Anna Baryshnikov’s Daisy and Ed Harris’ Lou Sr. fare exponentially better, digging into their brief parts with surrealist whimsy, never overplaying the weirdness at the expense of grounded character mythos.
Love Lies Bleeding was met with rapturous applause from the Midnight crowd, though I suspect that reception will temper as viewership expands. Genre nuts will bathe in the grotesque violence, Cronenbergian body horror (Glass and co-writer Weronika Tofilska revel in the expansion of human flesh, crackling bones and all), and erotic sense of ever-mounting tension. When Love Lies Bleeding hits its stride, it never lets up. You’ll bleed out yourself before it arrives at its unhinged, fervent finale.
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While deliciously red, there are anemic beats that maintain the feature’s strengths while immobilizing it from reaching even greater heights. Lou’s criminal backstory, disorienting and stylishly disposed of in crimson-tinged flashbacks, remains elusive. In the evocative early half, it’s effective, keeping the audience seduced in the brazen, celebratory queerness and oddities of Glass’ world. As Love Lies Bleeding adopts a more conventional crime thriller structure, imbuing weird moments with more and more sequences of commercial familiarity, those narrative holes distract rather than enhance.
Even at its worst, Love Lies Bleeding remains one of the most exciting premieres at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It’s violent, weird, frequently funny (Stewart should do more comedy), and—in its own surrealist way—as romantic a parable as last year’s Bones and All. It’s got character, damn it, and even if it isn’t perfect, it’s as electrifying a genre feature as you’re liable to see this year.
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Love Lies Bleeding
Summary
Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding is an electrifying odyssey of violent Americana and queer love.
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