Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass, 2024)

[therewillbeblus]

Kristen Stewart will team with Rose Glass for Love Lies Bleeding

a love story fueled by ego, desire, and the American dream (and steroids) centering on a woman determined to be a body-building champion who finds her life and attitude altered by the use of steroids.

Considering Glass’ debut Saint Maud was one of the best movies of the last few years and the first film in years to genuinely scare me, I expect this to have an extremely sinister tone and layered approach to characterization

[therewillbeblus]

Kristen Stewart will team with Rose Glass for Love Lies Bleeding

a love story fueled by ego, desire, and the American dream (and steroids) centering on a woman determined to be a body-building champion who finds her life and attitude altered by the use of steroids.

Considering Glass’ debut Saint Maud was one of the best movies of the last few years and the first film in years to genuinely scare me, I expect this to have an extremely sinister tone and layered approach to characterization

And I was not disappointed! The timing of releases invites an inverted comparison to Drive-Away Dykes, despite the tonal and thematic alterations.. This, too, is a retro, queer-female-empowerment, dark-crime-comedy road-movie; only, while Coen and Cooke's film was a lot sillier and looser by design, Glass continues to impose a robust formal rigor on her works while they simultaneously are constantly spiraling out of control. But it's in that dance of power dynamics, Glass letting things loose to explore and engage in the tangled chaos of her subjects, but she keeps controlled just like her protagonists as well - openly accepting their flaws with film grammar, and emulating their strengths when it counts.

Anyways, the comparisons* can go on: If Drive-Away Dykes is about the path to self-actualization through light fare about self-discovery and liberation, Love Lies Bleeding pitches its focus with more concentration (it's still very funny, but in both very similar and very different ways) on an appreciation for the untapped potential of the female body as an extension of a sharp mindset. These women aren't 'better' than men of similar ilk, they have very real problems and characteristics that prevent them from success and intimacy, and they're portrayed honestly (if at times extreme, for metaphor). Glass' film is more interested in meditating on real consequences of relationships, in step with its nasty neo-noir overtones. It's about the things we do for love: the messy path of unconditional love, and the things we do and compromises we make for it. It goes pretty on the nose with those signs, but I found the whole 'Love is the drug that gives us real strength' effectively moving, and the bombastic fantastical morph at the climax somehow sticks its landing as maybe the exact opposite possible direction of Punch-Drunk Love's climactic showdown, without sacrificing any of its power.

I can understand why people aren’t vibing with this, it’s messy, but it’s messy as an externalization of physiological surges.. Though I also think everyone misjudged Saint Maud too, so maybe people just don't get Glass, or I just don't get why people don't get Glass (I've yet to read a critique of either film that really makes much sense to me, beyond aversions to certain content full-stop).

From a pure 'entertainment' perspective, well, this is a blast. It evokes films like Red Rock West in narrative spillage and Miami Blues in idiosyncratic crime focus coated with popping colors to reflect the emotions erupting everywhere, internally and externally. There's a propulsive Clint Mansell score, Ed Harris chewing scenery (and.. other things..), two terrific lead performances in Katy O'Brian and Kristen Stewart, Dave Franco filling in his brother's shoes of showing up to play a douchey throwaway character, Jena Malone constantly battered to shield her beauty as the poster-lady for 'stupid heterosexual women who play into assigned submissive roles and suffer blindly for it' (rather depressingly, and yet a good joke in its design), a great sense of place in New Mexico (I swear, the apartments -and general lifestyles- of the central characters across these two lesbian road movies are identical), and plenty of surprises that you can't possibly see coming no matter how good of a guesser you are. And that's pretty great these days.

*Ultimately, comparing these films is both unnecessary and senseless for objective purposes, in that they likely won't be by future viewers who didn't contextually see them together.. But, I loved both, and I haven't been to the theatres in between (#DodgeTheDuners); plus I'm appreciating each more through the contrast, which evokes more consciousness to each's respective strengths. I don't love Love Lies Bleeding more because it's doing something better than Drive-Away Dykes is. It's just doing what it is trying to do better than the other movie (and there's the Neo-Noir factor, which earns this major points for simply being a decent and novel noir on top of everything else).

Oh, and this is not a horror movie. Not that it was advertised as such, but Glass' last film managed to trick the audience by sustaining and then escalating, rather than dropping, a jump scare - the effect of which I've never experienced before or since (well, maybe as a kid): Genuine physical symptoms of fear. So you're good there. There are some grisly images and violence, but nothing more extreme than an Ari Aster movie. You also need to be cool with graphic sex and women who are stronger than you though.

[pianocrash]

I suppose I wouldn't fare well with Saint Maud, either, but the level of humor in Love Lies Bleeding wasn't truly on par with it's fantastical aspirations, maybe. The first two acts were kind of incredible from a stylistic standpoint (specifically the sound design & soundtrack, including a keen use of Throbbing Gristle during a drug-fueled meltdown, which blurred by at such a frantic clip that I never wanted it to end), but the characters, despite various interjections at development, never felt connected enough to warrant the final act heroics, even though they were stock "it's not what you say, it's what you do" type of platitudes. As such, the incongruous sister side-story bore much of this, even though it became the pivot that set the rest of the film in motion. Despite that soullessness (or because of it?), it reminded me more of a Nicholas Winding Refn picture than anybody else's (the king of style vs. substance), even though Katy O'Brian seems worth much more than just this, and Kristen Stewart has been oodles better in just about anything else (lest I've just become too accustomed to her greater Assayas pictures that I watch over & over again). I did love Anna Baryishnakov's Daisy, a character that felt what I believe this whole picture was searching for, who feels like a living, breathing person, despite her selfish, one-sided love (and perhaps all the "love" depicted in this picture).

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That the movie ends with her half alive, only to be choked to death as a "funny" aside, is the real heartbreaker.

I did appreciate all the alien allusions that kept popping up (endless bugs n' larvae, toilets clogged w/ guts, embroynic sacs, crevasses leading to nowhere, overly starry skies, orange catte, etc.), however.

(and there's the Neo-Noir factor, which earns this major points for simply being a decent and novel noir on top of everything else).

Also read an interview w/ Glass that asked her about Jim Thompson, & she admitted to not knowing anything about him. Makes total sense, and honestly? Good for her!

[therewillbeblus]

I did love Anna Baryishnakov's Daisy, a character that felt what I believe this whole picture was searching for, who feels like a living, breathing person, despite her selfish, one-sided love (and perhaps all the "love" depicted in this picture).

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That the movie ends with her half alive, only to be choked to death as a "funny" aside, is the real heartbreaker.

I did appreciate all the alien allusions that kept popping up (endless bugs n' larvae, toilets clogged w/ guts, embroynic sacs, crevasses leading to nowhere, overly starry skies, orange catte, etc.), however.

Agreed, and interesting observation!

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The alien touches seem to come out in the presence of both polar extremes of emotion: rage, which is often associated with evil; and love, often linked to good (those nightmare/trauma-flashbacks with red light at the 'spot' were most effective under this aesthetic for me - how the past haunts us as an alien reminder of what we're capable of, yet always running from sobriety to the memory). However, the film admirably douses both in murky waters. Sure, Harris is evil, but what of O'Brian's murderous rage? How is it different? I'd suggest that she repurposes it for love, but it's just as much fear-based, like Harris' pragmatic disposals were, only more emotionally-driven.

And Stewart's willingness to clean up her love's messes? Is she falling into the same trap as her family - falling in love with someone who beats her like her sister is beaten, and someone who has the capacity for murderous outbursts like her father. Yes, it's 'different' in the sense that there's some willingness and acknowledgement of each to the other of their flaws and some determination to work on them throughout, and when regression occurs it's typically out of fear or in isolation without shared context that eases both parties when they communicate their vulnerable truths... but, there's an underlying tragedy of repeating behavior.

Glass is acknowledging that these acute circumstances in relationships (i.e. where a partner is placed in a position where they either choose to show up in an extreme way or tap out) don't necessarily "bring out the best" in us, but do let us know where our motivations and values are in a hierarchy in that moment - and for Stewart it's a moral compromise for love. For O'Brian, well, it seems fair to read into her early behaviors that she tries hard, and can somewhat prepare herself for the warning signs of complete dysregulation - and Stewart's enabling of drug use certainly didn't help that adrenaline from taking over! Still, this isn't going to be an easy journey, with the credit scene signifying the honest reality that there will always be instances of isolation from one's partner where you do something for them without it being a shared experience. And yet, that's a mature form of love, isn't it? Acts of service without recognition - and these are what occur throughout the film.

This strikes me as a particularly mature movie about the nature of relationships in general, more similar to Phantom Thread in its theme and position than Drive Away Dolls, which, also-admirably, focuses on the celebration of lesbian self-discovery. This is more of a conflicted celebration of discovering one's potential, since with great power (being in love, a relationship) comes great responsibility (burden, pain, euphoria, belongingness)

[therewillbeblus]

I'll have to see Love Lies Bleeding again in order to determine how well this was woven into the film with hindsight, but there's a pretty dark undercurrent fatalistically infecting healthy motives that makes this undeniably noir - and I think a lot more complex and admirable of a movie in general, meant to bend in a different direction than many detractors seem to be writing up (which may be a fault with the direction and the script's seemingly-didactic celebrations of love, though I believe Glass struck a similar kind of challenging ambiguity around spiritual utility in her previous film as she does here, and it's just not the approach people have experience being guided into ambiguity).

Anyways, this really starts with the Alan Carr nicotine cessation tape recorder

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Stewart is seeking relief, a healthy motive, and she's trying to train herself to engage in the world objectively with distance from passion, which can be healthy when passion involved assisting with and ostensibly-'enjoying' parts of murder! And yet, as soon as she sees O'Brian, passion takes over - she impulsively shuts down the gym, tries to woo her target with drugs, covers up murders for her.. O'Brian wants to help her lover and has healthy motives to do so, but is overtaken with anger from trauma and a baseline belief in a lack of supports for females for getting justice, like how Stewart reacts based on anxiety from trauma and the same baseline belief. There's an anxious attachment and avoidant attachment thing going on with Stewart and O'Brian, but it's very therapeutically accurate, with both taking on both roles in response to the other. You don't see that a whole lot in films, and it's a well-drawn observation that takes attention and space to flesh out that kind of dynamic.

So Glass' film moves in the direction of Love Conquers All in the finale, but delivers its tragic punchline immediately after, like the ending to The Graduate re-imagined in a modern zeitgeist with genre metaphor: Stewart engaging in the same cycle of moral sacrifice she did for her father, doing it alone while her partner sleeps in the car. Now, there's a reading where that's love - not needing your partner to witness acts of service for them to be meaningful - but there's something more nefarious: Each unable to live that life of dispassion that might make the world a better place. Glass is very careful not to say 'Fuck the World in Favor of This Couple!' - she recognizes that there's a yin-yang irony to tapping into life's greatest pleasures, but also showcases really grating stuff and making us sit with it. For instance, Stewart's physical abuse of Jena Malone to save her girlfriend's life is absolutely a Fuck Yeah moment, and is absolutely also a Oh NO one simultaneously. I refuse to believe that we're supposed to just cheer there. Sure, Malone is a caricature of a DV survivor who burns her advocates (and a rather unfair stereotype to perpetuate without adding any characterization, but the film spends so much time on details that serve its complexity already, I can't get that upset). It's so, so sad, Stewart resorting back to the passionate aggression she used to issue with her father, and not batting an eye over it, having devoted the last stretch of time to 'neutrality', helping her sister, working, trying to quit smoking, avoiding toxic romantic partners stalking her... all just cast aside in an instant. It had to happen like that, and yet we're meant to be sad after such a windup. Stewart had a healthy motive in staying neutral, in remaining a non-aggressive model for her sister to learn to trust, and just couldn't swing it against both a cruel world, and her own nature and conditioning.

I've read Alan Carr's quit-smoking book, and its function is completely in step with outcomes from addiction studies: To provide you with information you essentially already know, so that you don't need to use your finite will power for the day (that you need to cease the desire to smoke) recalling it independently. It's successful for being that psychological support. It also repeatedly tells you that the cigarette only provides relief for the addicted smoker, bringing you to baseline. There's something very tragic about the idea that, for Stewart and O'Brian, and maybe even queer women with strong personalities and desires and dreams and passion (at least at that time), the stuff they're chasing is just bringing them back to a baseline state of being secure and safe and 'okay', rather than a euphoric elevation from normalcy that the Hulk climax insinuates before ripping the rug out and planting us back on the road of limitations and hardship and inherent loneliness.

[Mr Sausage]

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There’s also a level on which O’Brien functions as an outward projection of Stewart’s anxieties and unacted desires. The two murders O’Brien easily commits, for example, are obviously murders that Stewart herself wants but cannot give herself permission to commit. Stewart puts up with unwanted touching and sexual advances, but O’Brien responds to it with violent rejection. Stewart has has never left her town, while O’Brien is not only peripatetic, but unable to bear any confinement even if it’s in a house (refusing to be another of Harris’ insects behind glass, which turns out to be Stewart in a hallucination). This culminates in O’Brien growing King Kong sized in response to Stewart’s rage and pain, like an avenging monster born of Stewart’s formerly repressed traumas, allowing Stewart to finally render her dad small and manageable (they also both are rejected by their mothers for being monsters in their mother’s eyes). Seems like Stewart’s rejection of her violent past has put her in a stasis, unable to move or act, out of which she’s only pushed by this strong, free, instinctive, and active projection of her needs and desires.

The movie actually reminded me of Ang Lee’s very Freudian Hulk.

[therewillbeblus]

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Those are well-observed touches, though I resisted delving too deep into that reading myself as it felt like my thoughts inescapably yielded allusions to Fight Club or Black Swan doubling 'selves' (not as literally-pronounced here, but as a kind of magical-realist reflection). I didn't find that approach quite as interesting, but that's probably because the ambiguity around the subjective / objective spiritual contact with God that Morfydd Clark has in Saint Maud is left in a similar fashion, but felt like a bolder and more original subject to tackle in that kind of unique way. In that film, we're constantly checking our own judgment of her character - arguably until the very last shot (though even that is not subjectively her reality, it's just the horror we're left with at the end, which too signifies loneliness: The objective tragedy of Maud's inability to connect outside of herself, and evidence of her disconnect with God; and the subjective tragedy of our own meaning being relative and in a vacuum). I guess Glass has ended a film a bit like this before, but this time it's less of a jolt, more subtle, and demonstrates a restraint that trusts her audience (in addition to allowing us to believe she's endorsing the cheap, simple reading, if we really want to ignore the writing on the wall) - but perhaps a bit much, given the responses I've been reading!

[Mr Sausage]

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How do you read the Christian symbolism, with the repeated images of her father and the pit representing hell and the devil, but that shot of the two women running through the clouds being heaven? It’s very blunt, and would risk triteness if so much of the plot didn’t make such an absolutist binary inadequate. I guess you could see the heaven stuff as satirical, but it wasn’t mocking or undercutting enough in tone, and it does come right on the back of a triumphalist moment of I guess magic realism, so that it comes across as ecstatic and expressive. Perhaps that’s the function of this symbolism, that it’s representing a subjective emotional reality that it projects outward into these expressive, symbolic exaggerations without seeing its own story and characters through that specific ethical lens.

This movie took a lot of interesting risks.

[Mr Sausage]

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Another interesting bit of symbolism: during the sex scene in the bathroom, Stewart asks O’Brien if she ever puts her fingers in her vagina during masturbation, which O’Brien denies. Stewart then has her masturbate while Stewart put her own fingers inside O’Brien, saying that she wants to see how wide she can stretch, ie. see how much of herself she can fit inside O’Brien.

Later, during the hallucination on stage, O’Brien sees herself vomiting Stewart up, purging Stewart from her insides (no longer containing her like one of Harris’ insects). This comes not long after a hallucination(?) of Stewart being there to provide emotional support.

I don’t know what this all means, but it’s certainly striking.

[okcmaxk]

Now realizing

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the snippet of Gulliver’s Travels on TV hints at the ending transformation

Between Bimbo’s Initiation in Funny Pages and this, A24’s a Fleischer household

[therewillbeblus]

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How do you read the Christian symbolism, with the repeated images of her father and the pit representing hell and the devil, but that shot of the two women running through the clouds being heaven? It’s very blunt, and would risk triteness if so much of the plot didn’t make such an absolutist binary inadequate. I guess you could see the heaven stuff as satirical, but it wasn’t mocking or undercutting enough in tone, and it does come right on the back of a triumphalist moment of I guess magic realism, so that it comes across as ecstatic and expressive. Perhaps that’s the function of this symbolism, that it’s representing a subjective emotional reality that it projects outward into these expressive, symbolic exaggerations without seeing its own story and characters through that specific ethical lens.

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Your final/arrival thought is exactly how I took it, though I'll try to dig a little deeper psychologically, in line with how we seem to both be appreciating this film as nonbinary in its views of its subjects and their romance. Stewart's flashbulb memories in red transcend trauma, because they are both nightmarish and alluring. And, significantly, something safe that Stewart can return to in isolation, a memory of an experience that was and is her's and that no one can possibly share - tragic but also comforting; an perhaps unhealthy strategy in service of healthy coping and resilience. O'Brian has a similar situation with her violence - clearly unhealthy but also an escape into self, a symbolic way to separate her from others. Both women feel different, a lack of belongingness. It's nice to find people like that, because the commonality fuels a healthy need, but it can also be unhealthy in triggering the other into the most extreme versions of their maladaptive behaviors (unconditionally apologizing for poor behavior/cleaning up others' messes; extreme aggression, drug use, selfishness); or a jarring and mobilized anxious-avoidant flux of attachment reactions.

It's not that these characters are "choosing" their reactions, but the film doesn't let them off the hook either. It's like an alcoholic who runs someone over with their car - they may have a disease or mental illness etc. that impeded the ability to make choices, and they still ran over a person because of their behavior. I think the same as you - the heavenly symbolism is allowed to be genuine for them, because the filmmakers genuinely love these characters and are approaching them from a favorably angle, as the most dignified characters in this town by.. maybe more than a few country miles? But just because they dignify these women doesn't mean there isn't room for objective criticism - and so the heavenly ride is validated, until it's not. And we drop back into reality and slide back into the muck. The heaven sequence was, and Heaven is a fantasy in this movie. Good feelings like orgasms or moments of connection or love or lifting or doing service or Hulking Up and riding through the sky are all fleeting, and there's a lot of pain and suffering and disconnection permeating existence, even when these two are together. The places these characters go to cope, that are depressing but known and regulating, are also impermanent resolutions to their problems. Ultimately they exist in the real world. So I think the Christian symbolism is partially used as a way to even reflect that Higher Meaning and Spiritual Sensations - whether from god or flesh - can sometimes be overinflated in its focus, though it's certainly also what's so attractive about life's hunt. It's just that a lot of life is also doing things you'd never think you'd do, driven by impulses you don't understand, and that might wind up okay and it might not, but that's also kinda just what life is..

These are flighting ideas, but that seems somewhat appropriate given the reading.