Sundance ’24: ‘LOVE LIES BLEEDING’ Is a Blood-Stained Queer Love Affair on Steroids

Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding melds a greasy crime drama with a gritty love story, presenting a saga steeped in steroid-fueled rage, white trash aesthetics, and memorably bad haircuts. Glass leans into B-movie intrigue with an elite level of execution, creating a visually provocative and impressively-performed world of high crimes and low sleaze and populating it with scumbags and weirdos. A followup to her excellent religious-horror debut Saint Maud, Love Lies Bleeding furthers Glass’ exploration of those on the fringes of society. In this case, it’s late-80s Nevada, a dried-up rural wasteland where the local gun club is the center of all cultural and sociopolitical activity, as well as the epicenter of its deeply-integrated criminal enterprise.

Sundance royalty Kristen Stewart stars as Lou, a quiet gym worker with a shaggy mullet and familial ties to the local crime scene. Lou has shut herself off from those connections as best she can. But when you’re living just miles down the lane from your family of well-connected transgressors, the criminal underworld has a way of setting its hooks in to draw you back.

When intimidatingly jacked bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian, sporting a curly helmet of hair) arrives in town one dark night, a flurry of coincidence, crime, and chemistry drive the two into each other’s arms, for better and for worse. Lou thinks of herself as a hopeless case, tethered to her dead-end hometown out of a sense of maybe misplaced loyalty to her penitent sister Beth (Jena Malone), herself the recipient of frequent wallopings by douchebag husband JJ (Dave Franco, looking scummy as ever rocking an oily mullet). The family’s patriarch, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris, concurrently long-haired and bald), fronts a gun-running operation that leaves him with a firm grasp over local law enforcement and a permanent fixture in Lou’s shaky psyche. Jackie’s pitstop on her way to a Vegas bodybuilder competition proves to be the catalyst to shake things loose and potentially help Lou move her life forward.

With a script co-written by Glass and Weronika Tofilska, Love Lies Bleeding flirts with arguably too many ideas: the elusive promise of American opportunity, family dynamics echoing domestic terrorism, addiction to self-improvement turning self-destructive, alongside its star-crossed lesbian romance that feels equally dreary and dreamy. Also, though never seen on screen, barbers that despise their clientele, or fashion writ large. However, not all these thematic explorations enhance the film’s narrative. In particular, moments like Jackie’s over-the-top ‘roid rage’ episodes feel more like a diversion than a meaningful contribution to the story. These instances, while visually impactful and shocking, often sidetrack the viewer from the film’s central narrative and dilute its overall thematic potency. When Glass’ film flexes its simple B-movie muscles, it dishes up a hearty stew of violence and recompense. It’s all the other accoutrements that sometimes muddy the flavor.

Nevertheless, Love Lies Bleeding is a fun slice of rough n’ tumble sleaze that boasts performances as rock solid as Jackie’s biceps from Stewart and O’Brian. Glass’ juxtaposition of pure slime against impressive production elements – including an attention-grabbing punch in the face of a soundtrack from frequent Darren Aronofsky collaborator Clint Mansell; and double-dealing cinematography from Ben Fordesman, who finds a way to explore both the claustrophobia of this small desert town and its expansive beauty, particularly during star-speckled night shots under a wide open sky – makes for an over-the-top venture into the creative wilds. Not everything always works but the composite of sexual heat and cold violence is intoxicating.

CONCLUSION: Rose Glass’ slimy, queer romance thriller is as bloody as it is weird, with Kristen Stewart and a beefy Katy O’Brian pouring the requisite steam to power ‘Love Lies Bleeding’’s sleazy, demented engines.