The opening scene of Love Lies Bleeding shows Lou using a microwave to heat up a dinner which she will discard without consumption. Her cat gets to it first while she's distracted, trying and failing to find some private pleasure on her couch. The loss seems unimportant because it turned out to be a small obstacle. People experience this type of loss which becomes apparent only after they have lost one hundred times.
The food from that dinner continues to stay in my mind.
Rose Glass's follow-up to Saint Maud is nominally a queer neo-noir, a crime thriller, a love story drenched in sweat and synth. It is all of those things. The film shows how desire creates economic value which affects bodies that society has always treated as less important.
The main character Lou played by Kristen Stewart displays a state of physical and mental fatigue which I found deeply moving as he operates a gym in the countryside of New Mexico. The film shows her living in a dirty apartment which she maintains as a purposeful act of messiness in her small bedroom. Her father, Lou Sr.,played by Ed Harris with a skullet that deserves its own critical analysis, owns the local shooting range and probably half the town. The funds exist for this purpose. Lou refuses it. She decides to avoid everything which would become necessary after accepting the situation.
Then Jackie arrives.
Katy O'Brian delivers a performance of Jackie as a person who moves forward constantly while she travels to Vegas for a bodybuilding competition and an unknown goal which seems like achievement when you view it from a distance. She constructs her body into a marketable product which people can assess through weight and judgment until she reaches the goal of winning a trophy and minimal industry recognition for women who resemble athletic tools.
"I made things right," Jackie says after a scene of violence so brutal I had to look away.
Glass presents a question which asks how people should define what is right when all institutions in their environment have become corrupt. When your sister's husband beats her and your father enables it and the law is just another tool men use to keep things exactly as they are?
The steroids matter. The story elements functioned as simple explanations which showed how Jackie developed his ability to create destruction. But no. Or not only.
They're labour, aren't they?An investment Jackie makes in her own body because her body is the only capital she has. The movie shows her drug administration and her blood vessels expanding during exercise activities while she develops into a size that could potentially exceed her ability to get injured. The economy of self-improvement taken to its logical, terrible extreme.
Glass moves through the gym with the same speed as a factory production line. All that effort, all that discipline, producing bodies that exist to be looked at, evaluated, found wanting or acceptable by standards none of these characters created. Stewart's Lou stands at his desk which serves as a supplement sales area while he works to clean up after male customers who have taken up more space than they should have. She's opted out of her father's money but she can't opt out of the system that money built.
The movie depicts escape as a challenging process which creates discomfort for me but I value its genuine depiction. The camera captures the genuine beauty of Lou and Jackie's encounter through its warm and physical lighting which creates a sensual atmosphere. But love doesn't fix anything. The situation has developed into a dangerous state.
The magical realism in the final act will lose some viewers. I understand that. The story lost me for a short time until it rediscovered me. Glass shows no interest in producing authentic visual representations through its artistic creations. She creates a fable which shows what occurs when women claim actual physical areas which society typically gives to male owners who possess guns and money and the self-assurance that stems from facing no doubt.
It's messy. Gorgeous and morally complicated and sometimes too much. I think it's supposed to be too much.
The canyon keeps appearing, that bottomless dark at the edge of town where bodies go to disappear. Every system requires a designated area to store data which it wishes to exclude from its operations.
