Review
Love Lies Bleeding (Romance, Crime, Thriller) (2024)
Director: Rose Glass
Writer: Rose Glass, Weronika Tofilska
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Katy O'Brian, Dave Franco, Ed Harris
Taking place in an unsavoury town, a blooming relationship causes one's own troubles to seep into their love life, calling forth a never-ending avalanche of harm, unable to escape from the icy mantle that controls everyone within this rotten place.
After an excellent debut, with Rose Glass' antecedent feature "Saint Maud," which showcased religious fervour and obsession, her next project sees more typical crime thriller themes completely refitted to follow the director's particular vision. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, it was co-produced by A24 and Film4, in addition to Escape Plan and Lobo Films, while distributed by Lionsgate and A24.
Somewhere in New Mexico lies a malignant community which corrupts anyone passing through its fetid streets. Lou (Kristen Stewart) lives in this town, feeling as if she's drowning in an endless cesspool, managing a gym owned by her estranged crime boss father. Isolating herself, being distant from most, she notices the recent arrival of aspiring bodybuilder Jackie (Katie O'Brian), who's on her own path, trying to pass town and enter a competition in Vegas. Once they talk, a relationship rapidly blooms, yet like everyone adding a presumptively tainted past herself, Jackie sinks into the tar pit of deceit and malice herself, tempted into using steroids and mingling with crime.
Furthering her creative vision, Rose Glass takes on a quintessential thriller with romantic and sexual themes. Passions are mangled into a brutal crime-oriented venture, haunting pasts returning to the forefront, mutating anything positive into an unrecognisable form.
Good intentions are bent, bowed and misshapen as anyone passes through this unnamed border town. Jackie is pictured as a determined and self-reliant woman despite knowing full well how to take advantage of certain benefits in exchange for the bodily desires of others. Meeting Lou suggests a dark spot; touting herself au-naturel reliant on her physical prowess, Jackie is instantaneously induced into the use of performance-enhancing drugs. This blind spot allows a darker entity within her to find itself at the forefront, taking hold to support both the passions of bodybuilding and Lou. Determined to depict a snarled entanglement of toxic relationships, the meeting between two lovers catalyses the darkest evolution or degradation of sorts. 
An unravelling took place in Glass' previous work—while "Love Lies Bleeding" is unlike said venture in terms of apparent style, her vision fails to compromise, which is precisely how the narrative treats its characters. Much like Morfydd Clark in "Saint Maud", once the edges of the mirror crack, it's inevitable that it will fracture unendingly until the reflection becomes unrecognisably warped. Sounding like a demerit, this complements its directors' style, throwing you off with a more standardised genre before disfiguring itself just the same. Stewart and O'Brian play well, and the latter casting feels destined, appreciating her to fill a refreshingly diverse role compared to others, often serving a strict or wooden tone. Her physically exhausting life, in more ways than one, is added to brilliantly by Stewart, who takes charge in this film and allows Glass to paint a near-complete portrait despite some misplaced splotches here and there.
In a perfect marriage of Glass and A24, "Love Lies Bleeding" shows us the honeymoon period. The toxicity of a relationship and the vileness of a corrupt town allow acting prowess to be capitalised upon, while often, these sorts of features see the environment in a lead role in this case, it's made to obey Stewart and O'Brian alongside supporting male actors in Franco and Harris. Its tendrils worm their way into the flesh of the inhabitants while sticking to the horizon like that initial crack in the metaphorical mirror.
Verdict
The heights and depths of performance-enhancing drugs.
8,0
