Love Lies Bleeding - Review

Rating: 4 out of 5

FOR sheer audacity alone, British filmmaker Rose Glass' Love Lies Bleeding deserves to be seen.

An uncomprising watch in everything it does, this mashes genres with giddy abandon to provide compulsive, uncertain watching that is equal parts lesbian romance, drug addiction tale, murder-thriller and Grindhouse-infused body horror. In doing so, it channels everything from the Coens to David Lynch while playing out in an '80s aesthetic.

Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian head the cast as Lou and Jackie, the two lovers at the centre of proceedings, whose blistering passion for each other sets them down a path of lust, addiction and murder.

Lou first meets Jackie at the rundown New Mexico gym she's working in and is immediately transfixed by her imposing physique and raw sexuality. Jackie, likewise, likes what she sees in Lou, although insists that she is only passing through on her way to a bodybuilding competiton in Las Vegas, which she is determined to win.

When Lou offers her free steroids, Jackie duly starts taking them. But attempts to lure Lou away from her hum-drum existence are curtailed by her sister, Beth (Jena Malone), who is trapped in an abusive relationship with her violent husband, JJ (Dave Franco). Lou insists on staying to look out for Beth and prevent JJ from killing her.

Yet there is also the threat posed by Lou's estranged father Lou Sr (Ed Harris), a career criminal who has the local police in his pocket and several bodies buried in a desert canyon on the outskirts of town. And that's not forgetting two persistent FBI officers, who want to talk to Lou about her missing mom.

Things come to a head when Beth suffers a particularly bad beating and Jackie takes matters into her own hands - the fallout from which sets in chain a series of murderous events that leaves the bodies piling high.

For long periods, Glass' film plays out like an early Coen brothers thriller on steroids of its own, given the numerous twists and turns and the odd flights of fantasy. But the longer it lasts, the weirder and more gonzo things become, culminating in some extremely head-spinning sequences that are sure to leave jaws on the floor.

Yet, incredibly, this doesn't detract from the central action, thanks in no small part to the excellent work put in by the ensemble cast. Stewart and O'Brian are mesmerising - whether igniting the screen together with their passion, or following their own destructive paths. They are forces of nature - two initially insecure, put-upon women, whose volatile relationship gives them an untapped confidence and strength they never knew they had.

You'll root for both of them, no matter how wild their actions get.

There's strong support, too, from Anna Baryshnikov, as a former acquaintance of Lou's who doesn't know what's bad for her, and from the ever dependable Harris, whose dominant father echoes some of his best villainous work (from TV's Westworld to A History of Violence), without feeling borrowed or too over the top. 

And that's no small compliment given just how many daring leaps this film takes. Glass, as she showed with her debut feature Saint Maud, isn't afraid to take risks or go extreme - and there are several sequences that defy belief (and which may well have you scrambling to Google to get some context).

But every sequence has a reason and something to say about either body perception, depictions of violence on-screen and in real-life (in particular, towards women) as well as love (at its wildest and most impulsive) and self-confidence (and throwing off the shackles of society's expectations).

It's what makes Love Lies Bleeding such a striking feature. It isn't afraid to swing wildly, yet retains an intelligence that is likely to give rise to some very interesting debate afterwards - no matter what you might ultimately think of it.