Love Lies Bleeding: Female Bodybuilding Thriller Twisted in Startling Ways

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B+

In the wake of Poor Things, director Yorgos Lanthimos's off-kilter coming-of-age fantasy, and one of the best films to come out of 2023, comes cinema's next best option for the absurd. It's not for everyone, but neither is Poor Things or any movie that tips the axis way off the centre of normal.

Love Lies Bleeding is bent in the most unexpected ways, filling the screen with the impossible while refusing to make excuses. The world is as the world is in director Rose Glass' unapologetic romantic thriller about Lou (Kristen Stewart), a young gym owner who falls for a bodybuilder headed to a Las Vegas bodybuilding competition.

Glass, who also cowrites with Weronika Tofilska, makes excellent use of the gym and the bodybuilding culture. The gym is pure noir—all sweat and grunts, with rooms full of free-style weights and bulky physiques, with guttural shouts of encouragement to lift "three more, two more, one more…" echoing in the background.

There is not a lot in Lou's life to make her happy.

She owns the gym but shows no affiliation with the clanking noise of weights dropping onto bench presses and the macho bravado of her clients. She's hassled by the FBI because of her crime-lord father (Ed Harris), she's protective of her sister Beth (Jena Malone), who is hopelessly in love with her dangerously abusive husband (Dave Franco), and she is kind to, but wary of, a persistent stalker Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov) who Lou rejects, even though she is likely the only other lesbian woman in town.

Then enters Jackie (Katy O'Brian)—out of all the gym joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into hers—a striking female bodybuilder who catches the attention of the men, but mostly Lou's. Jackie returns the attention.

Jackie is O'Brian's first lead role—and she endured a rumoured nine auditions before getting the part. Whether nine auditions were warranted or not, the decision to cast O'Brian appears to have been correct.

O'Brian was a former bodybuilder, and the physique she brings to the film—with some necessarily altered images for optimum effect—and the competitive poses are authentic. And even though the poised, oiled, and flexing muscles of the competitors (both men and women) may seem obscenely egocentric in what is perhaps the world's most narcissistic sport, Glass does not pass judgment.

Without asking, I wouldn't be able to tell you what Glass thinks of bodybuilding competitions. But I do know what Jackie thinks; she lives for them.

As the film's outsider, Jackie is the instigator of the action. And whether she is trustworthy is the ultimate question—which I think lingers long after the film ends. But there is another element to add to the mix, and it belongs to Lou.

Lou and Jackie begin a love affair. Lou supplies Jackie with steroids to give her the edge she needs. The steroids bring out the beast in Jackie, and it's not all good.

Playing along the edges of the film is Harris as Lou Sr., the aging, hardened criminal who looks like an emaciated, drug-worn Benjamin Franklin. Lou Sr. loves his girls, Lou and Beth, so long as they don't threaten his organization. But, as the saying goes, Lou knows where the bodies are buried. This knowledge comes in handy when Jackie crosses a line that Lou has been holding herself back from.

A fair warning, there are violent scenes that elicited screams from an audience of hardened film critics who have presumably seen it all. The violence, although infrequent, can be shocking and unexpected.

Love Lies Bleeding brings back the mid-80s nouveau-noir of Blue Velvet, Trouble in Mind, and Stormy Monday, with nods to Mulholland Drive, Bound, and The Hulk.

Glass has created a film where reality is merely a suggestion. Love Lies Bleeding got a standing ovation at a midnight screening at Sundance, 2024. Indeed, it has Sundance favourite all over it—obscure, independent, dark, and twisted.

It works if you let it. Just stop people who are determined to tell you the ending.

Love Lies Bleeding. Directed by Rose Glass. Starring Kristen Stewart, Ed Harris, Katy O'Brian, Anna Baryshnikov, Jena Malone, and Dave Franco. In select theatres March 15.