19/02/2024 - BERLINALE 2024: Rose Glass goes all out in her first US-produced film, a campy combination of crime-thriller and lesbian romance starring Kristen Stewart, Ed Harris and Katy O'Brian

If British director Rose Glass's debut, Saint Maud [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rose Glass
film profile], was a tautly disciplined and focused horror film, her first US adventure, Love Lies Bleeding [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which has just had its European premiere as a Berlinale Special screening, is its polar opposite: a steamy lesbian romance, a crime-thriller with nightmarish fantasy elements and a feminist statement that doesn't shy away from camp and doesn't take itself too seriously. The result is a wild ride that does not reach the artistic heights of Glass’s first feature but also doesn't pretend it's attempting to.

Lou (Kristen Stewart) is a gym employee in small-town New Mexico in 1989. This dead-end job allows her to meet Jackie (Katy O'Brian), a drifter body-builder dreaming of making it big in Las Vegas. The two promptly kick off a passionate love affair, with Lou helping Jackie on the path to her goal – which, maybe, becomes her own as well – by providing her with under-the-counter steroids.

But Lou's situation is way more complicated than it first seems. Her father, local crime lord Lou Sr (a long-haired, menacingly restrained Ed Harris, a delight to watch) owns the local shooting range where Jackie gets a job as a waitress after having backseat sex with the place's manager, JJ (Dave Franco) – who is in turn the abusive husband of Lou's sister Beth (Jena Malone). When Beth ends up in hospital with severe injuries, it sets off a chain of events fuelled not in small part by Jackie's overindulgence in steroids, which make her frenzied and extremely aggressive.

From this point on, the film takes on the shape of a Coen brothers-style crime-thriller, with the body count piling up through unexpected, sudden bursts of violence, and clumsy attempts to hide the crimes and misdirect the police, who are bankrolled by Lou Sr. There’s also the FBI, who are after him but have no evidence to nail him with.

DoP Ben Fordesman's widescreen cinematography captures Glass's America as a place of discarded dreams, dive bars, dusty roads and deserted spaces. In this atmosphere, Lou and Jackie's romance is all the more rawly sexual and subversive, but also hopeless – if it weren't for the imaginative fantasy ending. The effect of steroids on Jackie's body is shown in a hallucinatory manner that may imply it is just her perception – but if it were "real", it would suit the campy spirit of the film that stops just short of getting all-out trashy. Glass's tonal control here is admirable.

Stewart, pushing on with the renaissance of her acting career, and explosive newcomer O'Brian are perfectly paired: the former's disillusionment and cynicism at first find a fitting counterpart in the latter's enthusiasm and carefree nature, but as their relationship shifts and Jackie's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, Stewart moves into a more affirmative, resolutely tight-lipped mode.

Set at the end of the 1980s, the film displays accurate period detail, thankfully without diving too deeply into the overexploited nostalgia for the era that started with Stranger Things. Clint Mansell's varied score kicks off with a tune that harks back to John Carpenter's suspenseful themes with its bass line and synth chords, but as the film progresses, it changes and becomes wholly its own.

Love Lies Bleeding is a movie that does not go very deep, but more than compensates for it with its unbridled cinematic drive, bold thematic approach and fascinating characters. It is a UK-US co-production staged by A24, Lobo Films and Escape Plan.