Love Lies Bleeding Portrays Real Queer Relationships
By Anna Buescher
Spoiler warning for the new movie Love Lies Bleeding
This year, Rose Glass directed a new romantic thriller: Love Lies Bleeding. This gritty story follows Lou, played by Kristian Stewart, and a mysterious bodybuilder named Jackie, played by Katie O’Brian. The pair meet at Lou’s gym after close and hit it off leading to a blooming sapphic romance. The couple settle in together, but before they can find a sense of normality, Lou’s dark past becomes Jackie’s sudden future. Overusing steroids Jakie finds herself rage killing Lou’s abusive brother in law forcing Lou to slip back into her father’s slimy, abusive control over her life as they cover up the murder and attempt to bring light to Lou’s fathers horrendous history.
The romance between Lou and Jackie is palpable with plenty of intimate scenes, but the relationship also feels messy in a very real way. Jackie wants to leave for LA for a bodybuilding competition. It was her plan from the beginning. She was just passing through town. Lou, on the other hand, doesn’t feel able to control her past or feel able to leave her hometown. She’s tied down and refuses to move on. The couple fight, and argue, and make up, and make out in the way two, real, messy individuals finding comfort in each other do. They lean on one another in an enormously dramatized way, but the emotions the film brings about are in no way dramatized. Sometimes when your relationship is going in different directions it feels like the world is ending, even if it’s not.
This film showcases how messy queer relationships can be, and though it shares these emotions through death, explosions, guns, and drugs, the core of the movie is an experience we can almost all relate to, the fear that the most important person in your life will leave. I watched this movie with my own queer friend group, and we sat in those scratchy red chairs, and listened to gunshots blow through speakers and we laughed and we cried and we felt these raw bloody emotions alongside the raw and bloody characters on screen. Being queer isn’t all rainbows and sunshine. Watching uniquely queer experiences can be gross and putrid. Real means more than seeing a cartoon character with a blurry pride pin ever will.
Love Lies Bleeding was a fun and enjoyable movie with just as much humor as there was gore. And believe me, there was a lot of gore. This movie is a continuation of the real, tangible representation that is beginning to make its way into media. It’s exciting seeing realistic queer couples in movies, and I hope this forward momentum in the media continues.
About the Author
Anna Buescher is a current junior at Butler university studying Biology and French. She uses she/they pronouns and identifies as a queer woman. She is passionate about LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, fungi and much much more. You can reach out to her at abuescher@butler.edu.
