This romantic thriller focuses on the relationship between two women that turns violent when they both become entangled with a criminal network. With Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris and Dave Franco. Premiere: May 2.
A romantic, bombastic police officer, in a tradition that combines film noir –in the way it was used in the late ’80s and part of the ’90s– with some resources more typical of European cinema and even horror stories, LOVE, LIES AND BLOOD It is a love story that turns bloody police and perhaps something more than that. A bit THELMA & LOUISEthe same UNLIMITED (either BOUNDfrom the Wachowski duo) and with some contribution from BLUE VELVET out there, the film made in the deep United States by the British director of SAINT MAUD It has undoubted power and energy to distribute, thanks also to an intense cast, very committed to making credible a series of situations that almost all the time border on the absurd.
Everything starts in prototypical places of the genre in its version small town USA: a run-down gym and a shooting range somewhere in New Mexico. In the first we meet Lou (Kristen Stewart), the girl who runs the place, cleaning clogged toilets and dealing with heavy customers. In the second we meet Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a girl who recently arrived in town from Oklahoma who gets a job there after sleeping in a car with a certain JJ (Dave Franco), who will quickly recommend her to his boss, the flamboyant Lou Sr. (Ed Harris).
As it is a small town, you will quickly see that everyone connects with each other. The bald and long-haired Lou Sr. is, in case his name didn’t give it away, Lou’s father, and JJ is his brother-in-law, married to Beth (Jena Malone), his sister. And Jackie, who is a bodybuilder and dreams of going to Las Vegas to compete there, soon ends up training at the gym. Lou, who is a lesbian and has some kind of relationship with Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), watches her train and is stunned. Jackie has a very striking look, an exaggerated version of the “gym” style of that decade, like the protagonist of FLASHDANCE but with biceps capable of killing anyone. And no one takes their eyes off him.
After that first meeting, they both connect and, shortly after, Jackie moves in with Lou. In the midst of their romance, Jackie begins to consume the anabolics that Lou sells to clients to “improve” her body before competing, without taking into account how this affects her psychologically. And when an act of gender violence occurs in the family context, Jackie will respond in a brutal way, moving the plot from the romantic to the police. It’s obvious from the start, however, that Lou’s family (who is not on speaking terms with her father) is in business. unholy and, after the violent event, both worlds will mix with even bloodier results.
LOVE LIES BLEEDING responds to the tradition of romantic-violent films so typical of black literature – or its cinematographic derivatives type MURDERERS BY NATURE– but it also has some differences. Not only for making the central love story between women but for putting gender violence at the center of the action. Without intending to, Jackie ends up becoming a kind of avenger of this type of violence and all the forces of that town (the “patriarchy”, you could say) come out in search of her. But it is Lou, in practice, who has to put her “shoulder” on her and try to cope with the situation.
Glass makes it clear from the outset that, although the film responds in more ways than one to the canons of the black police officer, there are two elements that exceed that logic. On the one hand, its celebration of a duo of power women capable of defending themselves and getting into the heart of local power that is not only violent towards women. And, on the other hand, stylizing and rarefying her staging – in the way Jackie’s body transforms like the Hulk when she injects herself, in the way gore in which the beaten faces are shown, in the size of the bullet holes and in everything related to Ed Harris – which will open the panorama until reaching its somewhat outrageous end.
These “excesses” of Glass’ style give, at the same time, a characteristic of its own to a film that, like Jackie, becomes crazier and more intense – to the point of ridiculousness – as the minutes pass. Harris makes Lou Sr. a villain as overdone as he is unforgettable in an almost Lynchian while O’Brian is a revelation as the increasingly frantic Jackie. But it is Stewart who gives the story its center, its humanity. Lou is tough and seems very sure of herself but at the same time she is a sensitive and in love girl who is forced to get closer to the criminal life of her family, one that she always wanted to avoid. And that return is crossed by a long “history of violence” that comes from a lifetime. Her and millions of other women.
