TW: domestic violence

Spoilers: Saint Maud & Love Lies Bleeding

Love Lies Bleeding is the sophomore feature length film by Rose Glass. Her first film entry, Saint Maud, was an introspective religious horror film following the titular “Maud’s” struggle with faith, pleasure, and repression. Love Lies Bleeding is rather different in tone than Saint Maud, and is a romantic crime thriller with a more action packed and violent story. Both films are well done with amazing performances from the small casts, and are atmospheric. I recommend both films!

Love Lies Bleeding follows the love story of Lou & Jackie, a reclusive gym worker and a female bodybuilder on her way to a bodybuilding competition in 1980s Southwest USA. Lou is stuck at a dead-end job in a dead-end town due to seemingly unbreakable ties to her troubled family. She is introduced literally dealing with shit in a clogged toilet, pushing away the cloying Daisy, a woman who is clearly into Lou. This introduction reflects Lou’s struggle to distance herself from her manipulative criminal father, Lou Sr., while doing what she can to protect her sister, Beth, from her abusive husband, JJ. Jackie arrives in town, looking for a spot to crash while she preps for the competition in Las Vegas. She has left behind Oklahoma and is unhoused, trying to find employment. Jackie sleeps with JJ her first night in town, clearly loathing his pathetic attempt at lovemaking, to try and secure a job. Her next day in town, she meets Lou.

Kristen Stewart as Lou is probably my favorite role she has been in so far. Stewart seems so much more at ease in a role like Lou and has so much more chemistry with her costar than she’s had with other leads in the past. The way she looks at Jackie is downright filthy at times. The story really begins to take kick off when Lou introduces her to performance enhancing drugs, and with Jackie’s consent, begins giving her new love interest injections to aid her as she continues to train for the competition. Lou asks, “where do you want it?” and Jackie cheekily replies, “in the butt”. These scenes show the ease the two have around another. I enjoyed that the steroids led to squelching, throbbing muscle sound effects. While I do think the film overall has a happy ending, throughout my watch, I wondered if Lou had darker intentions for Jackie. She’s literally her dealer. While I was glad to be wrong that Lou truly adores her girlfriend, I think my early worries were a hint that Lou has a dark side to her.

The film also stands out to me because it focuses on two butch sapphic leads. Jackie admits that she “likes both” while Lou is a “grade A dyke”, according to a boorish male gym patron. He gets punched in the nose when he got too forward with Jackie. While there have been phenomenal entries into the wlw romantic thriller, like Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden or David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (which gets a shout out with Daisy’s constant mention of Winkies), the romantic leads are often very femme and styled in a more conventionally attractive way. That’s not to say the actresses playing our two leads, Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian, are unattractive, but they are deliberately styled and act in a way that is might not be as appealing to the male gaze. Jackie is a female bodybuilder after all and, as a gal who has spent time in the gym, there is this fear of being “too big”, “too bulky”, “too mannish” among some of the women who I have lifted with, not all though. That is anecdotal evidence of course, but Jackie is clearly proud of her impressive muscles (she should be!). While Jackie does indulge in steroids, I believe Katy O’Brian left the world of bodybuilding because she did not want to take performance enhancing drugs.

The story continues as the two follow the “U-Haul Lesbian” stereotype when Jackie moves in with Lou after their first night together. Even the sex scenes focus just as much on Jackie’s biceps as much as her breasts, and the sex scenes seem more authentic to female pleasure compared to others that brag about it *cough don’t worry darling cough*. They are short, passionate scenes, establishing how these two fell hard and fast for one another. It isn’t all fun for our two lovers though.

JJ and Jackie’s tryst earns her a job with Lou Sr. He works at a gun range and the film is interspersed with various gun types being shot or lying around to showcase his menace in the background of the story. He isn’t just a gun enthusiast, but an illegal gun runner, and has murdered many to keep his business from being noticed by the Feds. He exudes creep vibes, which are confirmed when flashbacks in black and red show that he dumps bodies of potential snitches into an ominous gorge. He also sniffs Jackie as he teaches her how to shoot, ew. Ed Harris is having fun with this role. He’s given a skullet and this ridiculous hair somehow makes him seem more menacing. There are multiple mullets in this film, and apologies to anyone catching strays here but, wow, only Stewart makes the style work. Jackie also sports some fantastic 80s hair and I have always enjoyed how actors can use their wardrobe and other styling to better embody their character. While his choice of hairstyle is odious, it was his ruthlessness as a criminal that led to a rift between him and Lou. Everything is set up for disaster for our leads now. I think this feels a bit contrived but, in all fairness, I have encountered real life situations that would appear contrived and fake if played out onscreen. Sometimes the world is actually this small. Adding to the explosiveness of this situation is that JJ is so obviously abusing his wife, but Lou is powerless to do anything to help her sister. Beth loves him and will not press charges and Lou Sr. seems fine ignoring it.

Jackie’s steroid use only seems beneficial to her early in the film. Her already impressive muscles seem to grow at her will at times, she is powerful. She practices her poses several times throughout while Lou reads “Macho Sluts” in the background. They make plans to spend their future together; after the competition in Las Vegas, they will just keep driving west, to the ocean. They discuss their families and Jackie says she ran from hers back in Oklahoma. Lou claims how much she hates her father but admits, shockingly, he does not mind her being a lesbian. This is an interesting perspective to Lou Sr. While he is ultimately a terrible father & the film’s villain, he accepts Lou as she is. However, he wants to control her, like she is one of the beetles he keeps in a terrarium in his office.

The situation unravels after the sisters go on a double date with their respective partners. JJ implies Jackie is using Lou and the two women fight following dinner. Lou is enraged that she slept with JJ. Earlier in the film, I was afraid Lou may have been biphobic when she asks Jackie, “you’re not just some straight girl?”.  While I think it is fair to interpret some of Lou’s actions here as biphobic, I feel that her true anger is not that Jackie sleeps with men as well as women, but that she slept with this man. The man who leaves her sister in so much pain and partly the reason Lou cannot escape her father and her past. Although the two reconcile, there is a tension between them now. Tender moments dreaming of the future are replaced with distrust.

Their fight is overshadowed by the news that Beth has been beaten unconscious in the hospital. One thing I appreciated was that even though there is violence in the film, we never see Beth abused onscreen. Lou is beside herself because she knows Beth will forgive JJ once again. Jackie also suffers seeing Lou’s agony. Her rage is visible in her expanding muscles and she storms off as Lou Sr. claims it’s finally time to do something about JJ. I was disgusted that it took him so long to do something. I would not say this for most characters who are also parent figures, but this is a criminal who calmly and skillfully executes people when they threaten his business, but harming his kid is fine. Maybe as an American, violence done in the name of your loved ones seems more palatable than violence to further your crime empire?

Jackie drives to JJ and Beth’s house. She beats the EVER-LOVING shit out of the man, slamming his head into the corner of the table in the living room until his entire mandible has been shattered. The violence is rather sparing in the film but is used to great effect when it does come up. Lou arrives later and helps Jackie clean up the mess, choosing to dispose of his body and car at the gorge we saw earlier. JJ and his car will join the carcasses of others who have run afoul of Lou Sr. She plans to use this to implicate her father by drawing attention to the location and alerting authorities of the other corpses there when she blows up JJ’s car after it’s wedged midway down the gullet of the gorge. She is downright gleeful, but this is naïve and a bit of a character misstep perhaps. A man like Lou Sr. must employ some sort of crooked police officer at his level. Lou would be aware of this yet still seems to think she can pin this on him.

Lou begs Jackie to stay put and not go to the competition. Jackie is irate, she has been lifting incessantly, juicing, and is ready to compete but Lou won’t budge. Now is the time to sit tight and wait or else they will draw suspicion to themselves and risk getting blamed for the murder. After all, Daisy saw them driving JJ’s car the night he was murdered. She is jealous and angry that Lou is with Jackie. Lou even locks her in when she leaves (a deadbolt that requires the key to exit and enter the apartment) but Jackie breaks out to hit the gym. I really love the sound effects of Jackie’s muscles. The squelching sounds remind me of how Maud put nails through an image of Jesus then wore them in her Chuck Taylor’s. Glass seems to understand that a wise director uses every sense they can to tell their story. Facing a barrage of creepy motivational posters (“the body achieves what the mind believes” or “destiny is a decision”), she decides to ignore Lou’s request and hitch hikes to Vegas to compete.

While Jackie makes the decision to run, Lou is comforting Beth. In one of the most upsetting moments, she wails when she learns that JJ is dead. This horrible creep abused her to the point of sending her to the hospital, but she is openly weeping for him. In spite of his abuse, she clearly loved him with her entire being.

When Jackie gets to Vegas for the competition, both she and the city have seen better days. This Vegas is populated with elderly folks at the slots as Jackie rushes to start prepping for the competition. She is finally feeling the detrimental side effects of the steroids. She looks exhausted, strung out, but surprisingly begins the competition well. She is doing great during her individual routine until she suddenly she hallucinates JJ’s mangled face before her on stage. She vomits up what at first looked like a giant grub of some sort but is the top of a slimy, half-dressed Lou’s head. She emerges from Jackie’s distended mouth on the middle of the stage and chastises her. The scene is abrupt and well executed in a film that has been relatively tethered to reality. Jackie regains composure and sees that she threw up on stage, in the middle of the competition, and hears girls behind stage giggling and mocking her. I am unsure if these women were laughing at her or not but regardless, her reaction to assault these women is overblown. Jackie ends up not only disqualified for her drug fueled outburst but arrested for attacking the other competitor. She is aided by Lou Sr., who now his her under his thumb. While she wanted Lou’s help, she was buffeted from reaching her lover by Daisy, who tells her to stay away and lies that Lou has moved on.

Lou Sr. is revealed to, of course, have the suspected dirty cop on his side. Through this officer and Jackie, he attempts to take out Daisy, who blackmails Lou into dating her or she will rat her out for JJ’s murder. Lou Sr. informs Jackie she needs to assassinate her. When Jackie arrives and shoots Daisy in the face, she is outraged to find Lou with her. Lou tries to explain and while I feared she may end up shot, Jackie cannot handle hurting her and flees.

The pressure continues to build as the FBI agents that have been following Lou the entire film arrive at her home while she hastily hides Daisy’s body. They continue pressing her to aid them, revealing that JJ was an informant, one in a long line that have been murdered. We see the full flashback that was shown in segments earlier in the film. Lou herself was the triggerman, killing the blindfolded man, and perhaps others in service to her father.

The corrupt cop tries to murder Lou, but she escapes. This is the final push Lou needed to decide to get rid of her father by any means necessary. I’m honestly a bit surprised she assumed that the authorities finding his dump site meant he would be removed from her life, but she was operating under less-than-ideal circumstances for good decision making. She knows for certain now that if she wants him gone, she needs to do it herself. She bundles up Daisy’s body and places her in the bed of her truck and goes to get Jackie and confront her father.

Before she can meet with him though, Beth and Lou violently fight one another over JJ as soon as the latter arrives at her father’s compound. Beth claims to still love him and that she hates Lou for her role in his death. While Lou is rightly flabbergasted and absolutely takes no guff from her sister, she ends the scene by angrily, resolutely yelling “love you”. This is another difficult scene because Lou, while wrong for assisting a murder and hiding a body, isn’t wrong when she tells Beth that eventually JJ would have killed her.

After the sisters’ fight, Lou is finally reunited with Jackie. The two tearfully reconcile, both deeply upset about being murderers. Lou begs Jackie to run, hide, while she deals with her father. The cops are closing in on all of them and Lou has a corpse in her truck after all. Lou wants to make sure her father can’t come after them or wriggle out of this charge now. While she does have some advantages, Lou Sr. shoots her in the leg. Jackie cannot leave while hearing Lou’s screams of pain. In a surreal sequence, Jackie shifts into a giantess. She handily lifts Lou Sr. away from Lou. The two incapacitate him & escape while he is stuck on the ground. His fate is left ambiguous, but Lou is leaving her family behind.

Giantess Jackie runs through beautiful starlight, with the sky shades of pink, purple, blue, and orange behind her. Lots of bisexual lighting in the sky. An equally giant Lou emerges out of the mist beside her, showing them finally running free. While I do not think Jackie is an actual size shifter, I loved these sequences illustrating her reclaiming control of her life and saving Lou. The shot of them running together is a beautiful way to show that they can escape the circumstances that kept them stuck. Through their love, they can get out.

However, the film does not end here. Nothing can truly end cleanly. Just like the final shot of St. Maud revealed a woman burning in agony after self-immolation and not a beatific miracle, the final scene shows Daisy is not dead. Jackie’s shot, while clearly striking Daisy in the head and injuring her, was a bit low, think entry wound between cheekbones and mandible vs. forehead, to necessarily kill her. Something that caught my eye at the time but I’m no gunshot expert, so brushed it off! I appreciated the choice to focus on exactly where she was shot so it left it open-ended. When she hears the woman coming to the truck bed, Lou leaves the sleeping Jackie in the cab. She walks around back and coldly strangles Daisy. She prepares to bury her alongside the highway but not before stealing a cigarette from her. While the women have escaped the danger behind them, they cannot necessarily escape the danger within them.

I have not mentioned this yet, but throughout the film Lou is trying to quit smoking. She is listening to self-help tapes to try and curb the impulse. She is also seen throwing out her ashtrays or packs of cigs at least once too. I thought her final moment of killing Daisy in a very close way, like strangling, and lighting up a stolen cigarette was a great way to show that Lou is unable to truly escape. She always thought it was her father keeping her from being unable to move on, and his influence is why she is the way she is, but it is part of her too.

I think the film overall was uplifting one about these two women’s journey to at least have a chance at happiness. The ending hints that things will not be as blissful as their run together but for the moment some sort of happily ever after has been achieved.

Review by Dee

Twitter @Sirenofscience