Love Lies Bleeding

A pumped Kristen Stewart is our touchstone in this sexily sinister queer neo noir from Rose Glass (Saint Maud). Stewart is Lou, who falls hard for a bodybuilder, Jackie (Katy O’Brian) working out at the New Mexico gym where Lou does a bit of everything. Jackie’s a drifter en route to a contest in Las Vegas, but with Lou there are enough sparks to hold her interest. But neither of them has a clue as to the trouble they’re getting into…

The inspirations here are — from pulp fiction — James M Cain and Jim Thompson, and from the movies their novels seeded ever since the 1940s (including the Coen Brothers, David Lynch in the 1980s, which is when Love Lies Bleeding is set.) The big difference being, uh, glaringly obvious. Let’s just say Stewart has a ball in a role that might once have been played by John Garfield or Burt Lancaster, and for all its gender reversals and genre revisionism, the movie doesn’t hold back on the visceral thrills of good old fashioned sex and violence.

Hot, yummy stuff… Part of what’s enjoyable about Loves Lies Bleeding is how Glass deploys her allusions and, with her two beautifully synchronized leads, distills what’s pleasurable from them while leaving behind old ugly ideas about women. Glass looks back and she looks forward, going dark and oh-so-sweet in a thriller in which the greatest danger — and thrill — is finally love.

Manohla Dargis, New York Times

A sweaty, sensual, dangerous exercise…for that, it’s a must-see.

Micca Caporale, Chicago Reader

Visceral and heady, this is a blood-soaked, all-American fable that’s as if Thelma And Louise literally went on steroids. Rose Glass is a force to be reckoned with.

Laura Venning, Empire magazine