LOVE LIES BLEEDING (2024)
“So how does an Oklahoma farm girl get into bodybuilding?”
Director: Rose Glass
Writers: Rose Glass, Weronika Tofilska
Cinematography: Ben Fordesman
Editor: Mark Towns
Music: Clint Mansell
Notable Cast: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris, Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco, Jena Malone
Women don’t really make good directors. In general. I can count on one hand the number of great films directed by women. Point Break, Monster, Pleasure and the film we’re here to talk about today. “But what about Claire Denis?!” you may be pulling your hair out asking. Yeah, I get it. That’s the ONE fucking name every film geek trots out when this subject comes up. They used to cite Sofia Coppola, but you don’t find that as much anymore as the shine wore off what was always fool’s gold.
Jane Campion? Snore. Mary Harron? Give me a break. Greta Gerwig? Are you seriously asking ME that question? No, they all suck to one extent or another.
Talk about stepping on one of the biggest third rails in Hollywood!
But facts are facts. Women make great writers, great producers, great musicians and designers and editors. But what they are not are directors or cinematographers. Obviously, there are exceptions, we live in the real fucking world, but for the most part, that’s just how it is. “Water’s wet. The sky’s blue. Women don’t make good directors. Who gives a fuck?” to paraphrase a film labelled “misogynistic” by the scolds in 1991.
When people get angry at this take of mine, it’s because they live in a world of fiction, much like Cliff in Crimes and Misdemeanors. I, like Judah, live in reality. And in reality, the list of your favorite directors does not include a woman.
Be honest, anon.
Having said that, I would not trade Kathryn Bigelow for anything short of world peace. NO ONE could have made Point Break the way she made Point Break. A singular action film with a singular vision, it’s the crème de la crème of the genre. Majestic. Aspirational. Point Break is a once in a generation film, and Bigelow is a BIG reason why (yeah, I see what I did there…).
Monster is probably the “least great” on my list of great films by women, as Patty Jenkins is no one’s idea of a great director. That movie is Charlize Theron. Without her, there is no movie. Period. In fact, I’d say the film’s esteem would have been greatly abetted by having a strong, male director at the helm. I get the whole “woman director for the first woman serial killer” thing. It’s cute. But, come on. Jenkins is a hack who got lucky with a solid script and out-of-her-mind-performance from Theron.
Pleasure is one of the darkest, nastiest, saddest, boldest, and just plain raw films I have ever seen in my life. Talk about being inside some demonic fever dream of the Los Angeles porn underbelly.
This flick grabs you by the collar and slaps you across the face for nearly the entire runtime.
Director and co-writer Ninja Thyberg is a filmmaker to watch. If she can follow Pleasure up with anything even close to the visceral experience of that film, hot damn!
It’s telling that of my list, half the directors are very young. Growing up in this screen addled hellscape has clearly molded some of these young women into bonafide filmmakers, and despite what you may be thinking, I am all for it. Women artists are some of our finest artists throughout history. Don’t ask me why filmmaking has seemed to elude them.
It was with this lens that I went into Love Lies Bleeding. In fact, I hadn’t even seen a trailer, or anything. Not sure I’d heard about it either. Unlike the hallowed days of my youth, I don’t really follow the goings on of Hollywood and new releases and all that shit. I rely on word of mouth mostly. No one said shit about this flick to me.
But I saw the thumbnail on HBO Max one night, and saw Kristen Stewart was in it, who I think is a fantastic actress (doesn’t hurt that she’s also gorgeous… don’t argue).
Even if I don’t grok to all her films, she makes VERY interesting choices in the projects and filmmakers she works with. Personal Shopper is one of my favorite films of the 21st century, and easily one of the honest to God scariest films I have ever seen.
Her presence in Love Lies Bleeding was a draw, as was the haircut she was sporting in the thumbnail on the streamer. Beyond that, I had no clue what the movie was about, who made it, or even who else was in it. Nada.
Alright, fuck it, I said to myself, I’ll put on the 1ST 5 Minutes and see if it’s worth more than that tiny investment of brain cells.
1ST 5 MINUTES
Holy fucking shit! Not since Blonde, way back in 2022, have I been grabbed by a film in the first frame as I was when I popped this baby on. Clint Mansell’s music is DOPE! Right away, it sets a mood. We’re not even past the company logos that start every film and we’re already being hypnotized by Mansell’s music. Goddamn. He is a genius. Seriously. His work with Aronofsky is legendary. His score for The Fountain is, in my mind, one of the best scores ever for a film. No joke. Imminently listenable, and it sticks in your mind long after the film is over. He just knows what the fuck he is doing. It’s refreshing to be in the hands of a master.
Right off the bat, we see the filmmaker, who I have no idea of at this point, has an immensely high taste level. Fuck yes! Great sign. But there’s a plot twist, as it turns out this isn’t even Mansell’s music!
WHAT?!?!
The track is actually named 1847 – Earth and it’s by some cat named Harald Grosskopf! Listen to this shit!
In fact, quite a few of the dope instrumental cues in this flick are not by Mansell. Mansell’s music for this movie is great, no doubt, but the truly memorable tracks, like this opening tune, are mostly by other artists. Further proof of the taste level and sheer command of their craft the director is exhibiting.
And then the first image, the camera slowly pushing into a star filled vista past two giant, red tinged… somethings. You’re not exactly sure what you’re looking at or what orientation you’re in. Combined with the music, it’s breathtaking. You know what a sucker I am for shots of outer space in places you’re least expecting them.
The camera goes past the two red structures (birth canal?) until all we see are the stars and blackness of space. YES! The camera pans down to a building seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Soon, it’s clear the place is a gym located in a converted warehouse of some sort, as the camera, still without cutting, booms down and begins tracking into the gym, as it follows a girl who has entered from the bottom of the frame.
FUCK. YES.
This is what I am talking about! Dynamite mood, killer photography, dope music, outer fucking space, THIS is how you start a movie. I am pumped. Can this flick actually be good!? Fingers are duly crossed.
The camera slides off the girl once she enters the gym and we get tons of shots of people working out. But this ain’t Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain, folks, far from it, though no less dark and twisted in very similar yet “couldn’t be more different” ways.
The music continues with all these great shots of very average to below average looking people working out at what is a decidedly lower-class looking gym. Let’s just say it’s not Equinox. Peep the motivational signs all around the gym. They are one of my favorite things about the film, as they’re featured in some key spots to amazing effect.
Then a smash cut where the music drops off and we’re suddenly in a bathroom stall watching from behind as a worker plunges their hand into the toilet to clear a clog. It’s Kristen Stewart’s Lou, sporting a mullet that should get its own Oscar (even Michael Douglas would be jealous). The fucking haircuts in this movie. Talk about such a specific vision that immediately tells us so much about these characters without them uttering a word. White trash doesn’t even begin to describe the filthy, sweaty milieu of this film. I love this kinda shit.
And then I see the director credit. Rose Glass. “Uh-oh. A chick directed this?” That’s exactly what I thought to myself.
But the movie had been SO GOOD up to this point. I was nervous, but still held great hope, it’s not like I start a movie hoping to hate it, I want to fall in love! Every time I go to the cinema, I go to be seduced, to fall in love and maybe even get hitched.
SEDUCE ME!
Put that ring on my finger, marry me and FUCK MY BRAINS OUT!
Stewart’s scatological chore is interrupted by Daisy, a blonde, smiley (with very yellow teeth, another great non-verbal marker) party girl, and after the toilet finally flushes, it’s quickly revealed Lou and Daisy are lesbians, with Daisy seemingly desperate to get with a very reluctant Lou. After some cajoling, Lou sends her on her way with some money she stuffs in her shirt. One crisis averted.
Cut to closing time. Lou shuts down the gym and locks the door. Cut to the same external wide shot of the gym we started on, the starry sky very visible in the background, the music kicks back in. Another non-Mansell track, this time it’s Shiho Yabuki’s Energy Flow. So good. I am loving this shit.
Then a dope tracking shot, from the side, of Lou driving her truck as the eerie music continues. Goddamn, I am in Heaven. This movie is putting me in some kind of mood. Casting a spell over me, the likes of which I haven’t felt in a while.
You actually think I’m taking this shit off? This movie has one of the best openings I’ve ever seen. Come on, why wouldn’t I continue with what turned out to be the Best Film, BY FAR, in the year of our Lord, 2024. That’s right, BEST FILM OF 2024.
Love Lies Bleeding is the artform elevated. The kind of filmmaking that gets your juices going. Rose Glass just vaulted into legend status with this film. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading. Go in as cold as possible. And let it wash over you.
The rest of the flick
You’re still here? Good. That means you watched. What did you think? I won’t really go into the plot mechanics here, they’re fairly rote, Kristen Stewart is a disaffected lesbian in small town 1980’s New Mexico, who falls in love with some female bodybuilder drifter, played by Katy O’Brian in a knockout, career making, gonzo performance.
They get involved with each other, KStew gets O’Brian hooked on steroids, then some bad shit goes down involving KStew’s sister and her brother-in-law, then more bad shit with KStew’s old man, a small-time gun runner and crime boss, played by Ed Harris, with what may be one of the best haircuts for any character in any film in cinematic history, and then the gals kind of break up, there’s another murder, but then they resolve shit and are back together at the end.
Obviously, I am greatly simplifying it, but you get the gist. Plot mechanics are not important here. It’s the mood of this flick. The look of it. The sound of it.
The feel of it.
And while I love Kristen Stewart, and she is perfect in this role, her character is not the most interesting. Not by a long shot. And as such, the movie does not belong to what may be its biggest star. No…
This movie is owned by Ed Harris and in particular, owned by Katy O’Brian, who as I have already said is a revelation in the role of Jackie. No idea where they found her, if she’s done anything else, no fucking clue, which is one of the film’s greatest strengths, as she is a drifter, new in town, nobody knows her, just as wedon’t know her. You have no pre-conceived notions.
But first, Ed Harris, who is as adept at playing upstanding men as he is depraved scumbags, and this film is no different. While it may be argued his character could have been given more to do, I feel that misses the mark. This is not a crime film, nor is it a thriller or a story of parental abuse, even if it contains many of those elements in heavy doses.
No, at its core this is a love story between Lou and Jackie, all the rest is window dressing that gets in the way of their love for each other, whether genuine or out of sheer desperation, or maybe both, it’s real to them, and Glass wisely keeps that front and center as all the chaos nearly consumes them.
Befitting such a great actor, Harris gets the best lines AND my Favorite Shot, no small feat because this movie is loaded with some dope shots and hauntingly beautiful imagery. It’s that shot of Harris, drenched in red, his long hair hanging behind his bald head, holding a just fired pistol.
It’s a fantastically creepy image, with Harris’ hollowed out cheeks and hard edges, goddamn does he have an amazing look. It’s part of a series of wordless flashbacks they return to as a sort of leit motif to explain the complicated history of Stewart’s Lou and Harris’ Lou Sr. And it is very effective whenever it is cut to. Compact storytelling right there. Not easy to do.
And Lou Sr. gets my Favorite Line, when Lou is threatening to go to the FBI and tell them where Lou Sr. hid all the bodies (it’s the canyon we first see in the opening shot (though it’s hard to know at that point in the film that you are looking at rock walls as you ascend a chasm)). Lou Sr. asks Lou if she’s threatening him, to which she responds in the affirmative after an agonizing beat of hesitation.
“That was real stupid, honey.”
I love the way Harris delivers that line. The fatherly, “honey” at the end is everything.
Harris is note perfect throughout the film, natch, none moreso than when he is indulging his pet bug habit, whether letting them crawl over his hand or eating a giant beetle in a fit of rage late in the film, Harris fucking delivers here. Glass must have been pumped to snag him for her movie. I wonder if he was her first choice. Whatever the case, he looks PHENOMENAL in this, and really lends an air of gravitas and menace to the proceedings.
His scenes with O’Brian’s Jackie are also quite good, whether hiring her for a job, giving her a shooting lesson, or bailing her out of jail, their scenes sparkle because you have no idea what he’s going to do next. Ed Harris is a real actor’s actor. Funny that he’s in this and Pain & Gain, two of the only fictional movies I know that feature bodybuilders. A good triple feature would be Pumping Iron, Pain & Gain, and this. I’d pay to go see that.
But the movie really belongs to Katy O’Brian. She inhabits the character of Jackie from the inside out, and plays so many different shades and dimensions of her character, both broken and triumphant, powerful and powerless, that you can’t take your eyes off of her.
Love the small peek into female bodybuilding subculture we get here, or at least the trashy fringes of it.
The movie is good from the jump, no doubt, but it doesn’t really START until Jackie shows up, first, in the back of a car getting rammed by Dave Franco’s slimy, abusive JJ, then getting a job at Lou Sr.’s gun range and finally showing up at Lou’s gym, where there’s an instant spark. They fuck, Lou gets Jackie into steroids, and the rest is history.
Check this dope sequence, set to Gina X Performance’s Nice Mover.
How hot is that? Really can’t express in proper terms quite how much I LOVE the shots of Jackie’s muscles and veins growing and popping in real time. What a fantastic conceit, that is used throughout the film, to connote when Jackie is feeling jacked, powerful, invincible. Great work by Glass and her co-writer to conceive of this, and for Glass to make sure it looks real and not some cheap CG bullshit.
No idea what the budget was, but the effects work is top notch, whether it’s Jackie’s rippling muscles or JJ’s jaw flapping from his skull, incredible work here. Truly. Nothing worse than bad effects that take you out of a movie. Here, the effects serve to really enhance the film and kick it to another level. So important to have a director with taste and discernment and intelligence enough to know when an effect is working or not.
Check these two quick scenes here.
Look at the utter command of craft on display. The shots. The lighting. The effects. The music. The editing. The sound design. The performance. It does not get better than this.
Those shots of the inspirational signs in the gym, not gonna lie, they make me cream my shorts.
What can I say, I fucking LOVE a good push-in. And Mansell’s music as she works out. Damn. Out of sight. It simply does not get better than this.
I take it back, it does get better, namely, my Favorite Scene in the whole picture. Or maybe it is more of a sequence, because the whole bodybuilding competition in Vegas is hands down the best sequence I have seen all year, and maybe even all of 2023 also, not sure. Equal parts Fear and Loathing and Leaving, it fits nicely in the pantheon of tripped out, bugged out cinematic trips to Las Vegas.
Jackie hitchhikes her way to get to Vegas in the back of some stoner van, hallucinating the stoner has black eyeballs as the bodybuilding competition sign morphs in the background.
She makes her way to the back room where all the competitors are getting ready. Look at O’Brian here as she walks into the ready room, her body language, so small and defeated, not the powerful, joyful person we’ve seen before and know she can be.
God, she’s so good in this part. LOVE the little make-up bag she takes out with a cartoon duck on it. The way she places it on the table and puts her hand on it for a beat? Almost makes me tear up. The way small things like that can bring comfort when you’re in a strange place. Great shit.
And then she juices, and starts to feel powerful again. Time to take the stage…
How fantastic was that? The sound design, camera work and visual effects when she is up on stage with the other contestants all doing the same statuesque poses is top level shit. Incredible filmmaking here. That plastic smile on Jackie’s face as she poses. Amazing.
And then when she does her solo act, set to Colourbox’s The Moon is Blue, I am in awe. When the song really kicks in and she goes into her routine, WOW. I have never seen anything like this film or this character ever before. This is what going to the movies is for… transport me, show me a world I’ve never visited, show me people I’ve never met.
Love Lies Bleeding delivers the goods, consistently.
I like how Jackie feels more and more powerful as her set goes on. She hasn’t felt this powerful since she murdered JJ in cold blood by bashing his head until his jaw ripped loose (eagle-eyed viewers will notice in the scene where Jackie stands over JJ’s mutilated corpse, her head nearly touches the ceiling she’s so large in that moment, a very nice, subtle (a lot of people don’t notice) foreshadowing of what will come later), and that flashback hits her right there on stage. So unexpected and welcome at the same time.
Not at all how we think the scene is going to go, then Jackie vomits up a full-size version of Lou, that I won’t even begin to try and interpret. I’m not good at that shit. But it feels right. It feels tonally consistent with everything else going on.
Obviously, she’s hallucinating from the steroids (check how the audience seems to be cheering and applauding her set, but when we see the crowd, no one is doing any of that), but she really did vomit on stage. Mortified, she hears laughter, turns around, and sees three of her competitors staring at her from backstage, but they don’t look human, they have demon faces. YES!
I love that shit.
LOVE.
This movie kept surprising me, and I was there for it. Her roid rage takes over as she beats the living shit out of one of the “demon” girls, leading to Jackie’s arrest, and subsequent bailing out by Lou Sr. Love the use of Throbbing Gristle’s Hamburger Lady at the police station. Top notch shit.
But back to the music in the bodybuilding competition scene. It’s so key. If anyone but Rose Glass had directed this script, this song would not be used, and the scene, and entire movie, would be worse, no doubt in my mind. You can tell when watching that Glass must have conceived of some of these scenes with those specific songs in mind. Had to. And this scene is the greatest example of it.
Though I do feel a lot of the songs in this film could only have been chosen by a woman. I’m working on a television project with my wife featuring two female protagonists, and a lot, probably 85%, of the music we’re envisioning is coming from her playlists, not mine. She just finds stuff I would NEVER find, even though our tastes are extremely similar. She has a knack for sniffing out the dope shit. I think Rose Glass is like that. Perfect tracks for the perfect scenes. This movie was not slapdash, you can tell the care and consideration that went into making this vision a reality. Refreshing.
The movie ends in a wild sequence that climaxes with Jackie growing to gigantic proportions, 30 feet easily, and rescuing Lou from sure death at the hands of her father (I love how Jackie starts transforming just as Lou Sr. fingers the bullet wound in Lou’s leg, almost like Jackie can feel Lou’s pain, and Hulks out in response to it). As most people miss the foreshadowing earlier in the JJ death scene, some are shocked at this moment. I wasn’t shocked, but I was very pleasantly satisfied with this whole sequence.
No, I can’t explain how either Lou or Lou Sr. see Jackie this size, as it is simply a metaphor, an externalization of the power Jackie feels in that specific moment. She’s never felt more powerful than here, when she is able to rescue her lover from death, defeat the evil father, and abscond to places unknown to live their fairy tale, complete with turning Lou into a fellow giant so they can both run through the clouds and stars together.
What a beautiful film. Beautiful writing, direction, music, photography, sound, editing, performance… and it’s all there in those thrilling 1ST 5 Minutes.
The One Sheet
There are three posters for this flick, none of which, or all of which, seem to be the official one-sheet. Each of the three features one of our leads, but as with the rest of the film, the two best ones are with Ed Harris and Katy O’Brian, featuring nice shots of them on a black background, the tops of their faces cut off, creating a tension in the image, with the title in that dope red font, and a great tagline, REVENGE GETS RIPPED.
Love. It.
Great poster campaign.
And that does it for Love Lies Bleeding, the best film of 2024 (and best soundtrack, easily), featuring Katy O’Brian with one of the best performances of the decade. She fucking killed it in this movie. Killed it (there’s tons of great scenes with her I didn’t mention, one standout is where she calls back home to Oklahoma from a pay phone. Devastating). Not easy to outshine seasoned thesps like Harris and Stewart, but O’Brian did it, and made it look easy!
One thing that stood out and I have no explanation for. We start on the stars in outer space, then the gym is named Crater Gym, and throughout the film, the night establishing shots very consciously place a starfield in the background sky. These are effects shots that are not cheap.
In addition, there are quite a few overhead shots that could conceivably be thought of as being filmed from space. So, what’s with all the star/space/moon imagery? Is it an omnipotent observer? Is it the fact our main characters’ heads are in the clouds? That everyone here is a veritable space cadet? Hard to say, but I love little touches like this that go largely unnoticed by most, but were very important to the director.
And one final note, not that I grok to cape shit, but if you’re looking for a new Wonder Woman, look no further. Katy O’Brian IS what Wonder Woman would look like in real life, or at least a shorter version, as WW is over 6 feet. But as we see with the effects work here, to make her taller in a scene is easy. What is not easy is finding someone with her physique. Make it happen, Warner Brothers!
See you in two bulk cycles…