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Film Review — Love Lies Bleeding
Kristen Stewart and Katie O’Brien are both excellent in Rose Glass’s gripping lesbian neo-noir crime thriller
Unlike the recent lamentable pseudo-parody Drive Away Dolls, Love Lies Bleeding is a lesbian neo-noir crime thriller that features genuinely interesting characters and a properly taut narrative. Director Rose Glass’s debut film Saint Maud (2020) proved an outstanding psychological horror gem, but this is an even more visually confident work. It also features a great pair of leads in Kristen Stewart and Katie O’Brien.
In a small New Mexico town, circa 1989, gym manager Louise “Lou” Langston (Stewart) meets Jaqueline “Jackie” Cleaver (O’Brien); a young drifter with dreams of winning a Las Vegas bodybuilding competition. They fall in love, and Lou lets Jackie stay at her apartment. In between sex and steroid shooting, Jackie gets a job at a shooting range run by Lou’s estranged father, Lou Langston Snr (Ed Harris with the most frightening hair this side of Peter Stringfellow). Lou Snr also smuggles guns as a side business, attracting the attention of the FBI, though so far, they’ve been unable to prove anything, as witnesses who talk to them invariably disappear.
Complications concerning Lou’s sister Beth (Jenna Malone) and her abusive husband JJ (Dave Franco)…
