Is LOVE LIES BLEEDING compelling? Is LOVE LIES BLEEDING gripping?
The answer is a resounding yes.
LOVE LIES BLEEDING is a compelling, gripping neo noir thriller fed on steroids, driven out to a dive bar and given an unlimited tab.
An antidote to the disappointing dildo joke Drive Away Dolls, LOVE LIES BLEEDING delivers story, performance, mood, music, sound and a virtuosity of verve, swerve and curve.
Arguably a career best for Kirsten Stewart and a major calling card for Katy M O’Brian and Anna Baryshnikov, director Rose Glass and her co writer, Weronika Tofilska, work wonders on the genre, producing a pulsating thrill ride of vice, vengeance and venality.
Set in the Nevada/New Mexico landscape of bleached bone aridity, LOVE LIES BLEEDING is a heart stopping reminder of what the cinema can do.
LOVE LIES BLEEDING begins with the manager of a gym, Lou, elbow deep in a blocked toilet bowl. It’s a brilliant metaphor for the shit that she is going to deal with over the course of the film.
Lou lives alone, is estranged from her gun club owning father, and has an unappreciated protective bent towards her older sister trapped in an abusive marriage.
Into her establishment comes Jackie, an itinerant gym junkie on her way to partake in a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas. She is instantly smitten, taking on a handmaiden role, giving her bed and board, fixing her food and supplying her with steroids so she has a better chance of realising her dream.
The dream quickly becomes a nightmare of ‘roid rage and a complicity with both Lou’s gun running dad and abusive brother in law.
There are echoes of the Coens and Quentin in LOVE LIES BLEEDING but Glass is confidently carving out her own place among classic accounts of film noir.
Stewart is superb as Lou and O’Brian is a breakout as the bulked up Hulk like Jackie.
Anna Baryshnikov is a revelation as Daisy, the ditzy daffy dyke who has a puppy love crush on Lou and is not averse to using a little blackmail to get her in the sack.
Ed Harris is demonstrably demonic as Lou’s dad and Dave Franco is inestimably sleazy and vile as the wife beating brother in law.
Cinematographer Ben Fordesman lensing is fulsomely seedy as is the score by Clint Mansell.
A ready gift for comic dialogue and dramatic tension, lust and logic, a perfect vision of imperfection, embodied with such energy and courage, LOVE LIES BLEEDING is a ripper.