Love Lies Bleeding
In sophomore director Rose Glass’s queer melodrama Love Lies Bleeding, Kristen Stewart plays Lou, a chain-smoking dirtbag dyke and gym manager who splits her time between unclogging toilets, fending off the unwanted advances of her overzealous admirer Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), worrying about her sister Beth (Jena Malone), reheating frozen dinners in a drab apartment, and masturbating on a faded couch in full view of her cat. When she meets ambitious muscle mommy Jackie (Katy O’Brian), who’s passing through town on her way to a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas, the star-crossed sapphic lovers immediately fall into a spiral of toxic U-haul infatuation. Glass, who directed the 2019 psychological horror flick Saint Maud, brings a startlingly singular and stylish vision to life. She’s cited David Cronenberg’s Crash and Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls as influences for Love Lies Bleeding, and the carnal obsession of those films shines through in her work. The result is a seedy, sexy, high-octane ride that holds its own amongst the erotic thriller canon.
by Julianne Bell