Small-town frustration, bodybuilding escalations, intense passion and even more intense violence collide in the Berlinale entry Love Lies Bleeding. The dark pulp thriller with Kristen Stewart is a clear recommendation.
In Love Lies Bleeding, a vial full of steroids becomes the first cautious proof of love between two women. One is gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) and the other is bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian). She could do with the growth hormones, as she wants to take to the stage for a competition in Las Vegas and triumph over the muscle-bound competition.
The film by Rose Glass, which is screening as a special gala at the 74th Berlinale, shows the emerging relationship between the two women in the 1980s. However, their love is swallowed up by the ugly abysses of the small town somewhere in New Mexico where Lou and Jackie meet. How Love Lies Bleeding turns from a physical love story into a pulp thriller of shocking excesses of violence is a stirring and thrilling trip.
Berlinale thriller with Kristen Stewart shocks with spikes of violence
At the beginning, Rose Glass primarily observes Kristen Stewart’s Lou, who has been condemned to be an outsider in the small town as a lesbian woman. The former Twilight star plays the main character, withdrawn and plagued by frustration, like a human pressure cooker.
Jackie ultimately turns out to be an outlet for the pent-up feelings. For the director, the tramp is initially more body than character. Ben Fordesman’s camera scans every pumped-up muscle area of the bodybuilder with Lou’s reverent, excited gaze.
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(Love Lies Bleeding)
The aforementioned ampoule of steroids finally sparks a stormy romance between the two. Carefully separated egg yolks to keep the fat content lower for Jackie’s omelette is the kind of passion that Love Lies Bleeding celebrates.
But Lou is guarding secrets that are slow to break out. Lou’s father (Ed Harris), who runs a shooting range and is involved in criminal machinations, is also entangled in the manageable web of characters full of memorable hairstyles. And Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone), who suffers from the abuse of her violent husband JJ (Dave Franco).
To earn money, Jackie takes a job with Lou’s father at the beginning of the movie without knowing the family circumstances. When the situation between Beth and JJ, who also works at the shooting range, escalates, the bodybuilder finally turns into Lou’s extended arm. At this point, it is not revealed what exactly happens.
In any case, the sight of Dave Franco’s jaw after Jackie has finished with his figure made me laugh hysterically and shocked at the press screening.
Here you can watch another trailer for Love Lies Bleeding:
Under the surface of Love Lies Bleeding, things are bubbling surreally
In Rose Glass’ film, however, it’s not just a corpse that has to be disposed of as unnoticed as possible. Lou would much rather take the opportunity to finally ruin her father and put her drastic past and ancestry behind her.
Jackie, however, is not so easily instrumentalized for her own purposes. After the unexpected outbreak of violence, the strength athlete’s body increasingly becomes a dangerous component that Lou cannot simply tame.
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With her feature film debut Saint Maud, Rose Glass previously made a horror film in which a religious nurse falls prey to mental and physical delusions. Love Lies Bleeding now only touches on these horror elements, but the director doesn’t want to do without them completely.
When Jackie tenses her growth hormone-boosted muscles, her body swells as if she were a member of the Marvel Avengers. There is also a surreal sequence in which the bodybuilder Kristen Stewart vomits out her figure and Lou lies on the floor covered in slime like in an Alien movie.
Does Lou need Jackie to realize her unfulfilled desires and brutal frustrations? Or is Lou rather the impetus that drives the bodybuilder to unimagined peak performance? Love Lies Bleeding combines both thoughts into a dicey neo-noir showdown that furiously takes the thriller part of Rose Glass’s film and the stormy romance to the extreme.
