Muscles ripple, veins pop and electronic music throbs in a heaving, hyper-sexy neo-noir drenched in sweat, blood and bug guts.
If that last one seems a touch less expected, that moment, courtesy of a beetle-chomping Ed Harris, is far from the only off-the-wall provocation in Rose Glass鈥檚 film, a pulpy, fable-like lesbian crime thriller where bodies, large and small, get ravaged beneath starry desert skies.
Not all of it works. Heavy doses of melodrama and flashy surrealism sap some of the lurid spell of 鈥淟ove Lies Bleeding.鈥� But this feels tantalizingly close to the idealized version of a film. Stewart has been one of the most electric stars for years. But 鈥淟ove Lies Bleeding,鈥� in which she plays a cynical gym worker named Lou who falls in love with a body-building drifter, Jackie (Katy O鈥橞rian), gives Stewart a vivid noir sandbox where all of her talent for obsession, desire and rage finds its gnarliest expression yet.
Glass, the British filmmaker whose 2019 horror film marked an exciting debut, opens 鈥淟ove Lies Bleeding鈥� on a slightly magical note, gazing at the stars. The camera pans slowly down to a New Mexico warehouse where music thumps and people are flocking to. What sinister nocturnal den could this be? It鈥檚 momentarily disappointing to learn that it鈥檚 merely a gym, full of men and women pushing themselves to exhaustion with machines and dumbbells. Signs around them blare slogans like 鈥淥nly Losers Quit.鈥�
The urge to make yourself bigger 鈥� with weights, drugs, guns, power or, maybe, love 鈥� reverberates through 鈥淟ove Lies Bleeding.鈥� More than once, Glass will linger on muscles swelling, almost Hulk-like, though those expansions have nothing on the immensity Lou and Jackie ultimately find together.
Poisons are also lurking everywhere. To the exercisers, weakness is one. Lou is a smoker but trying to quit. Jackie is hooked on a body-builder fantasy and self-actualization mania. And then there鈥檚 the malignancy of the local shooting range, where Lou Sr. (Harris) presides over a corrupt gun-dealing empire behind a desk surrounded by creepy crawlies. The satire of 鈥淟ove Lies Bleeding鈥� isn鈥檛 timid. A billboard reads: 鈥淒reams, Next Exit.鈥�
The shooting range is where Jackie lands a job, after a transactional encounter with a sleazy, mulleted flunky named JJ (Dave Franco) in his car. 鈥淭hat was magical,鈥� he says after something that was very clearly not. The real magic will come later in 鈥淟ove Lies Bleeding,鈥� but not for JJ, whose abusiveness to his wife and Lou鈥檚 sister Beth (Jena Malone) leads to a bloody series of events that reluctantly bring Lou into increasingly closer orbit with the estranged father she resents, Lou Sr.
All of this proceeds, in a way, out of the love that blooms between Lou and Jackie. It begins with an injection of steroids and a kiss, and quickly turns passionate and protective. Their increasingly tight bond drives them to violent extremes. To be in love is to be ruthless 鈥� with former lovers (Anna Baryshnikov plays a jilted love interest of Lou's) and family, alike.
Jackie鈥檚 roid-addled disturbia is a factor, too, making 鈥淟ove Lies Bleeding鈥� an interesting corollary to 鈥淢agazine Dreams,鈥� not to mention another beefy A24 film about family rot and muscle-building.
Like that film, 鈥淟ove Lies Bleeding鈥� is set in the 1980s, though it feels more out of time. As things spiral in the script by Glass and Weronika Tofilska, the movie keeps an expansive eye toward the grisly happenings, at times adopting the perspective of Jackie鈥檚 drugged delirium, like when she escapes to Las Vegas to participate in a body-building contest, or sliding closer to Lou Sr., as he coolly pulls strings.
But it鈥檚 getting dangerous to cut away from Stewart. 鈥淟ove Lies Bleeding鈥� loses a little momentum every time she鈥檚 not on screen. No one would come out of 鈥淟ove Lies Bleeding鈥� wishing for less of Harris, though. He seems to be getting only better with age, his voice more resonate. As clownish as he鈥檚 made up in the film 鈥� bald on top, long hair to his shoulders 鈥� he resolutely grounds a movie that resorts to some unnecessary outrageous flourishes. (I fear this is an increasingly common effect of today鈥檚 battered movie world 鈥� an urge to overcompensate with buzz-hopeful quirk.)
But neo-noirs made with this degree of style deserve some latitude to go for broke. As the sign says, 鈥淥nly losers quit.鈥�
鈥淟oves Lies Bleeding,鈥� an A24 release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for violence and grisly images, sexual content, nudity, language throughout and drug use. Running time: 104 minutes. Three stars out of four.
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
