The Reel Review
A reclusive gym owner falls head over heels for an ambitious bodybuilder in town to make some quick cash before heading to Las Vegas for a competition. But she gets more than she bargained when their volatile love affair results in extreme violence involving her own criminal family. Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian and Ed Harris star in this lesbian crime drama set in 1989.
Working from a screenplay she wrote with fellow director Weronika Tofilska (Baby Reindeer), director Rose Glass (Saint Maud) swings for the fences – their story is always gritty, pulpy and violent, sometimes riveting, and other times sliding into (unintended?) comic ridiculousness. O’Brian (Twisters, The Mandalorian) gives a magnetic performance as the increasingly unhinged, roided-up bodybuilder, with the normally-wooden Stewart holding her own as the lovesick gym owner finding herself in an increasingly dire moral dilemma.
Unfortunately, the pulse-pounding film is hampered by some really awful hair and prosthetics – Jena Malone’s battered, swollen face looks more like an elementary school paper maché art project and Ed Harris’ blond extensions make him more like Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show than a menacing crime boss. The story’s big climax also is diminished by a moment of fantasy that is just bizarre, solidifying Love Lies Bleeding‘s place as a trippy, surreal drama guaranteed to develop a cult following.
REEL FACTS
• Like her character Jackie, Katy O’Brian was previously a competitive bodybuilder.
• Ed Harris and Jena Malone also played a very different type of father and daughter in 1998’s Stepmom, starring Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts.
• Kristen Stewart and Jena Malone also co-starred in 2007’s Into the Wild.
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