By To say that I was curious to see the audience demographic of my opening night LOVE LIES BLEEDING showing would be an understatement. Whatever scenario I envisioned, it certainly didn’t include the kind, middle-aged couple that gave me a sweet wave as I sat down next to them. Should I tell them? I thought, shooting them a worried look upon hearing the woman lean in and tell the man how she didn’t have any idea what the movie was about, that she had just picked it for their date night. But, then—mercilessly—the lights dimmed. Nicole Kidman announced that we come to this place to laugh, to cry, to care. Too late. I settled in, giving them one last concerned glance as our long, strange trip began.
To their credit, they sat through the entire movie, albeit with no shortage of shocked gasps, hearty guffaws, and a BYOB tumbler of what smelled suspiciously like red wine. And to the film’s credit—it’s just really great cinema. LOVE LIES BLEEDING is an instant cult classic: a refreshing, weird-as-hell film that represents a much-needed return-to-form for low-budget action movies. Much like the Safdie Brothers’ acclaimed 2017 thriller, GOOD TIME, it’s one of the genre’s most compelling offerings in recent memory. Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of eerie, dreary, beautiful small-town New Mexico—and boasting no shortage of shots of well-oiled muscles—it’s one of the most aesthetically distinct movies I’ve seen in recent years. A Bonnie and Clyde-esque action-romance about two women (one a gym manager, the other a bodybuilding vagabond), LOVE LIES BLEEDING also sees TWILIGHT-frontwoman-turned-arthouse-movie-darling Kristen Stewart fulfilling her wish of doing “the gayest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.”
The film follows Lou (Stewart), a quiet, stir-crazy gym manager who dreams of escaping her small town, but can’t quite bring herself to take the leap of faith. That’s largely thanks to her desire to keep a watchful eye on her sister, Beth (Jena Malone), whose abusive husband, J.J. (Dave Franco), beats her incessantly. But that all changes when Jackie (portrayed by Katy O’Brian in her first but certainly not last lead role) rolls into town while passing through on her way to a bodybuilding competition further west in Las Vegas. Stewart first meets her at the gym, and the pair quickly become enamored with one another—a connection that dangerously intensifies when Lou introduces Jackie to steroids. While Jackie’s physical prowess (and chances at winning the competition) increase drastically, those ripped triceps come at a significant cost to her sanity. Fueled by honeymoon phase infatuation and roided-up decision-making capabilities, the pair create a perfect storm that chews them up, spits them out, and leads them down a path of murder, crime, and dangerous entanglements with the shadowy skeletons Lou has hidden in her closet.
And there’s a lot of bones in there. Despite the sexed-up trailers and (assumed) hopes of the handful of single men who also trickled into the theater on opening night (hoodies and ballcaps pulled tight across their faces), LOVE LIES BLEEDING has less to do with steamy bedroom scenes than it does with societally-induced queer loneliness. Lou’s life is suffocating to the very core, passing her days unclogging toilets and dealing with haughty customers in a dead-end job at a gym owned by her controlling father. One of the only queer women in her close-minded small-town, she doesn’t appear to have very many friends or romantic opportunities. So, it only makes sense that when Jackie blows into town like a literal walking red flag, she falls head-over-heels—despite the fact that you get the feeling even she doesn’t think it’ll end well.
No matter how many abusive husbands, tired situationships, and creepy, gun-totin’ dads stand in their way, and no matter how grim the situation appears for our humble heroines, they somehow manage to stick the landing. In defiance of decades of film history stacked against them, this is a movie that—surprisingly, thankfully, refreshingly—doesn’t kill its gays. This is a movie that takes THELMA & LOUISE, a cinematic masterpiece that walked so this one could run the full distance, and makes it where both women live to see another day, riding off side-by-side into the sunset (to their glorious, sapphic paradise). It’s awesome, hopeful, and, considering their dire circumstances for most of the film, a totally unexpected arc, one that left me with the same shell-shocked satisfaction I had the time I was tricked into riding my first roller coaster at the age of seven.
Perhaps that’s because, with its razor-sharp twists and heart-pounding turns, LOVE LIES BLEEDING feels as much like a stomach-churning theme park ride as it does a movie. Considering its R-rating and (at times) brutal subject matter, it’s a film that won’t do big box office numbers. But that’s just fine—because it doesn’t need to. The sheer existence of an eccentric, bizarre, totally ahead-of-its-time film like this one really drives home the fact that exciting, widescreen originality is back in fashion in arthouse theaters. Here’s to the creative renaissance.
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