The Media Tourist

Kristen Stewart stars in a gritty neo-noir story of muscles, mullets and murder

Love Lies Bleeding
Starring Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris & Dave Franco
Directed by Rose Glass
Rated R

In theaters now

There’s love, lies and bleeding aplenty in this gloriously gritty love story about two young women, toxic family ties and good things that go bad and keep getting worse.

In her second feature film (after the acclaimed Saint Maude in 2019), British director Rose Glass bears down on mullets, muscles and murder in late ‘80s America, where a mousy gym manager, Lou (Kristen Stewart), falls for a hunky female bodybuilder, Jackie (Katy O’Brian). Pretty soon there’s hot sapphic sex, crazily bulging biceps, Ed Harris caressing a caterpillar, and a growing body count at the bottom of a smoldering New Mexico gorge.

It all meshes in the bold, brutally unpredictable twists of Loves Lies Bleeding, which (in case you’re wondering) has no connection to the Elton John song of the same title from 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. The road in this movie is a dark desert highway, and the movie barrels down it with bruising neo-noir propulsion as Lou and Jackie find themselves falling ever deeper into each other, bound together in a hopelessly tangled web of lust, rage and vengeance, and racing to cover up a crime.  

The performances are all wowza. Stewart adds to the growing breadth of her wide-ranging career arc, from swooning over sexy vampires and werewolves in the Twilight flicks to her Oscar-nominated starring role as Princess Diana in Spencer. O’Brian, who’s had roles in The Mandalorian and a couple of Marvel movies, flexes her real-life background as a former bodybuilder into full, brawny play as Jackie, who dreams of oiling up and winning a big competition in Las Vegas. Ed Harris (above) is pure seething menace as Lou’s estranged father, sporting a Crypt Keeper ‘do and determined to keep the skeletons of his violent past buried.

There’s also James Franco is a philandering sleazeball and Anna Baryshnikov, who costarred in the AppleTV+ series Dickenson, as the local meth head, Daisy, whose sexual obsession with Lou becomes a fatal attraction.

It’s wild and wicked and crazily original; bodies pile up so quickly, I became concerned that Lou wouldn’t have enough rugs to roll them in and dispose of them all. When Jackie’s muscles bulge and enlarge and pop out of her skin, like the biceps of the Incredible Hulk, we’re not to meant to take it literally, but rather as a hyper-visual projection of her escalating emotions. When James Franco beats his wife (Jena Malone) so badly she ends up in the hospital, well, he’ll find out he shouldn’t have done that. And when Harris’ character crunches down on a beetle, it just shows how he’s one badass, beetle-biting hombre that you don’t want to mess with.

Throughout the movie, Jackie shoots herself up with steroids; Lou even holds the syringe, with no judgement. “Your body, your choice,” she says. The raw, visceral thrills of Love Lies Bleeding might not be everyone’s choice for a soothing afternoon matinee. But for more adventurous moviegoers, it’s a buckle-up blast about the things we do, and might do, for love—blood, lies and all.

—Neil Pond