Rose Glass Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ (2024), starring Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco and Ed Harris

March 16, 2024

by Carla Hay

Katy O’Brian and Kristen Stewart in “Love Lies Bleeding” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“Love Lies Bleeding” (2024)

Directed by Rose Glass

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in New Mexico (and briefly in Las Vegas), the dramatic film “Love Lies Bleeding” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latin people and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A gym employee and an aspiring professional bodybuilder meet, fall in love, and get involve in deadly criminal activities.

Culture Audience: “Love Lies Bleeding” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Kristen Stewart and intense movies about outlaw lovers.

Ed Harris in “Love Lies Bleeding” (Photo courtesy of A24)

Gritty and suspenseful, “Love Lies Bleeding” is a rollercoaster ride of a crime drama that has unexpected moments of fantasy and horror, along with a co-dependent love story between two women. The outcome of this love story is intended to be as impactful as the results of all the murder and mayhem that take place in this intense thriller. It’s a well-acted and artfully made film about desperation, revenge and the lengths that people will go to in order to fulfill ambitions or protect loved ones.

Directed by Rose Glass, “Love Lies Bleeding” was co-written by Glass and Weronika Tofilska. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. “Love Lies Bleeding” is the second feature film from Glass, who made her feature-film directorial debut with the 2020 horror movie “Saint Maud,” a story about a fanatically religious and mentally ill woman.

There are some elements in “Love Lies Bleeding” that are similar to “Saint Maud,” particularly when twisted horror-like hallucinations of a main character seem to come to life. However, both movies are very different from each other overall. “Love Lies Bleeding” is not for people who are easily offended by bloody gore or explicit sexual content. “Love Lies Bleeding” is an above-average noir thriller that brings some unique twists to what’s usually seen in movies about outlaw lovers.

“Love Lies Bleeding” takes place in 1988, mostly in an unnamed small city in New Mexico, where the movie was filmed. The movie’s opening scene is at a grungy local fitness studio called Crater Gym, where gym employee Louise “Lou” Langston (played by Kristen Stewart) does menial tasks, such as attending to customers and doing janitorial duties. A co-worker named Daisy (played by Anna Baryshnikov) has an obvious crush on Lou and tries to get Lou to go on a date with her, but Lou politely rejects Daisy’s advances.

Lou, who is in her early 30s, is an introverted loner who is a chronic smoker and lives with a cat. She’s the type of person who will listen to anti-smoking audio recordings, perhaps as a way to try to quit smoking or as an ironic way of rebelling against what the recordings are saying. During the course of the movie, more of Lou’s background and her family are revealed.

Lou’s father Lou Langston (played by Ed Harris), also known as Lou Sr., is a scummy and ruthless crime lord who lives in a mansion and owns a gun club as a way to launder money. Lou’s mother has been missing for the past 12 years. Lou won’t come right out and admit it, but she’s pretty sure that her mother is dead, and she suspects her father had something to do with this disappearance. Lou is estranged from her father for this reason and many other reasons.

Lou is closest to her older sister Beth (played by Jena Malone), a married mother of three sons. Lou despises Beth’s husband JJ (played by Dave Franco), because JJ is very abusive (physically and emotionally) to Beth, who won’t get help for this problem out of fear and loyalty to JJ. JJ works at Lou Sr.’s gun club and is involved in Lou Sr.’s criminal activities.

One day, a stranger comes to town who will capture Lou’s attention and Lou’s heart. Her name is Jackie (played by Katy O’Brian), an aspiring professional bodybuilder, who has arrived from Oklahoma. Jackie, who is also in her 30s, is passing through New Mexico on the way to a bodybuilder competition in Las Vegas. She visits Crater Gym to work out. And it’s at Crater Gym where Lou first sees Jackie and has an instant attraction to her.

Before Lou and Jackie meet, Jackie has a sexual hookup with JJ in his car because she heard that JJ works at a gun club and hopes that he can help her get a job there. Sure enough, after their sexual encounter, when Jackie asks JJ if there are any job openings where he works, he gives her a business card and says yes and tells her that he’ll put in a good word for her. At the gun club, JJ introduces Jackie to Lou Sr., who hires her as a waitress, because she says she doesn’t like being around guns.

Shortly after Lou and Jackie meet and flirt with each other at the gym, they become lovers. Jackie soon shows herself to be a skilled hustler, because she charms Lou into letting Jackie temporarily live with Lou until Jackie goes to Las Vegas. Lou is not happy at all when she finds out that Jackie is working at the gun club. She comes right out and tells Lou that Lou’s father is a “psycho,” but she says that Jackie is free to work wherever she wants.

Jackie tells Lou a little bit about her background. Jackie says she was adopted at age 13, and she used to be a “fat kid,” who was bullied. Jackie also hints that she is estranged from her family when she says she doesn’t really have anyone who supports her bodybuilder dreams—a fact confirmed in a later scene when Jackie calls her adoptive mother. More details eventually emerge about Jackie’s troubled past.

Lou finds out that Jackie and JJ hooked up after JJ tells Lou about it during an argument that he has with Lou. When Lou angrily confronts Jackie about it, Jackie (who says she is bisexual) admits to hooking up with JJ. Jackie is able to smooth things over with Lou, because Jackie says that the sex with JJ was meaningless and only happened because she used JJ to get a job. Jackie also reminds Lou that she hooked up with JJ before Jackie met Lou.

Even though Lou is a quiet introvert and Jackie is a talkative extrovert, they both know without saying it out loud that they are both emotionally damaged from family problems. It’s a big reason why they are attracted to each other but also why they develop a dangerous co-dependent relationship. Soon after they become lovers, Lou offers Jackie free steroids, which Jackie is reluctant to take, but she gives in to Lou’s pressure to let Lou inject Jackie with the steroids. Jackie then becomes hooked on using steroids.

It’s hinted that Jackie’s steroid abuse could be the cause of Jackie’s hallucinations where her muscles become abnormally enlarged and she sees herself as turning into the size of the Incredible Hulk. There are other hallucinations she has that are pure grotesque horror. But observant viewers will notice that Jackie’s steroid abuse might not be the only reason for her delusions, as she appears to have some type of undiagnosed mental illness.

It’s enough to say that Jackie and Lou get caught up in murder and desperate cover-ups. Even before this happened, Lou was already on edge because two FBI agents working together—one named William O’Riley (played by Orion Carrington) and one named Dave (played by Matthew Blood-Smyth)—have her under surveillance. FBI agent O’Riley approaches Lou at the gym to question her about her father and her mother. Lou says she no longer speaks to her father and has no information about where her mother is.

“Love Lies Bleeding” has a lot of familiar storytelling about crime, betrayals and revenge. However, it’s not very often that these stories are told in movies from the perspectives of queer women characters, one of whom happens to be a bodybuilder. Lou and Jackie go to many extremes out of an underlying desperation and unhappiness that they have about their lives. There are clues about this discontent throughout the movie, such as when Lou seems to enviously admire Jackie for traveling to Las Vegas by herself, because Lou has never been anywhere outside of her small city. Jackie has convinced herself that becoming a rich and famous bodybuilder will make her own life happy and fulfilled.

Stewart has made a career out of playing fidgety and insecure characters. She gives one of her better performances as this type of character in “Love Lies Bleeding.” O’Brian has the harder and more complex role as Jackie, who will keep viewers guessing about how “good” or “bad” Jackie really is. Harris, Franco and Malone handle their roles capably, although their respective characters in “Love Lies Bleeding” are not very well-developed. Baryshnikov doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but she skillfully portrays Daisy, who is not as ditsy as she first appears to be.

“Love Lies Bleeding” has a few things that require suspension of disbelief. For example, if Lou Sr. is such a powerful crime lord, then there would be more than just two FBI agents snooping around. But this factual flaw can be overlooked because “Love Lies Bleeding” is a low-budget movie and the story is focused more on the relationship between Lou and Jackie than on any law enforcement investigating any crimes. “Love Lies Bleeding” doesn’t pass judgment on all the awful and cruel things that happen in the movie, but instead invites viewers to ponder if all of this destruction is worth it in the name of love.

A24 released “Love Lies Bleeding” in select U.S. cinemas on March 8, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on March 15, 2024.

Review: ‘Saint Maud,’ starring Morfydd Clark and Jennifer Ehle

February 10, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Saint Maud”

Directed by Rose Glass

Culture Representation: Taking place in unnamed city in England, the horror film “Saint Maud” features a predominantly white cast (with a few black people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and upper-middle-class.

Culture Clash: A hospice nurse in her 20s is convinced that she can communicate with God, but her religious beliefs sometimes conflict with other people.

Culture Audience: “Saint Maud” will appeal primarily to viewers who like “slow burn” horror films that leave a lot that’s open to interpretation.

Morfydd Clark and Jennifer Ehle in “Saint Maud” (Photo courtesy of A24)

There’s never any question that something is very wrong with the mental state of the title character in the psychological horror movie “Saint Maud.” The problem is that Maud doesn’t see anything wrong with herself, as long as she’s getting all the guidance she needs from the deity that she thinks is in communication with her. “Saint Maud” (the feature-film debut of writer/director Rose Glass) is a haunting story about the fine line between religious fanaticism and losing touch with reality. Throughout this well-acted film, Maud often blurs those lines, sometimes to devastating effects.

“Saint Maud,” which takes place in an unnamed city in England, never reveals how or why Maud (played by Morfydd Clark) became obsessed with Christianity and the idea that she can communicate with God. The main things that viewers find out about Maud is that she’s a woman in her 20s who works as a hospice nurse, a profession she’s had for about a year. She previously worked in a hospital, where a terrible incident happened that was related to Maud having a mental breakdown. This breakdown isn’t shown in the movie, but it’s discussed by Maud and a former co-worker named Joy (played by Lily Knight), who knows some things about Maud that Maud doesn’t want other people to find out.

Maud lives a solitary life in her sparsely furnished studio apartment, where she spends most of her free time praying, reading the Bible, and engaging in other religious practices. She has a shrine that includes a crucifix of Jesus Christ and illustrations of saints and other holy people. Much of “Saint Maud” is narrated with her voiceovers, where she usually sounds meek and soft-spoken. But all is not tranquil in Maud’s world.

This chaos is clear from the movie’s opening scene, when viewers first see Maud: She looks crazy and almost like she’s in a trance. And she’s crouched on a bathroom floor with blood on her face and hands. The movie eventually shows what led her to get to this horrifying point. Until then, viewers of “Saint Maud” get taken on a ride of her slow descent into pure madness.

Near the beginning of the movie, Maud is shown as the caretaker a wheelchair-bound patient named Amanda Köhl, a former dancer/choreographer, whom Maud describes in a voiceover as “a minor celebrity.” Amanda, who is in her 50s, lives alone and has no children. There are vague references to Amanda’s past as a bon vivant with an active social life. But now, Amanda is struggling to cope with the reality that she’s dying, she can’t dance anymore, and she’s even losing her hair because of the cancer. That doesn’t stop Amanda from being somewhat of a chainsmoker.

Maud explains in a voiceover that she doesn’t care for creative types because they tend to be very self-involved. In that respect, Amanda fits that description. But it’s obvious that Amanda’s moodiness and difficult attitude has a lot to do with the pain and trauma of having stage 4 lymphoma of the spinal cord. Amanda lives in a village by the sea, in the type of Gothic mansion that’s often see in horror movies. Even though Amanda could be isolated, she welcomes having visitors.

And that’s a problem for Maud, who thinks it’s best for Amanda to live the type of quiet and hermit-like life that Maud has when she’s in her own home. Even though Maud hasn’t been taking care of Amanda for very long, Maud shows a very possessive and manipulative side in how she handles her relationship with Amanda. Maud acts inappropriately jealous when Amanda has visitors who show a sexual interest in Amanda.

One of these visitors is named Richard (played by Marcus Hutton), who dotes on Amanda and around the same age as she is. Richard used to be one of Amanda’s suitors. It’s clear that Richard still has feelings for Amanda, but there’s no romance between them. In fact, Amanda is somewhat rude to him and at one point tells Richard: “Don’t be an idiot.” When he leaves, Amanda tells Maud that Richard is a “pompous asshole,” and Amanda makes a snide comment about Richard’s hair plugs.

The other visitor is more problematic for Maud because Amanda is very fond of this person. Her name is Carol (played by Lily Frazer), who’s about 25 years younger than Amanda. When Carol comes over to visit, and she and Amanda are heard laughing in Amanda’s bedroom, Maud spies on them and sees that Amanda and Carol are lovers. It isn’t long before Maud comes up with a scheme to try to get Carol out of Amanda’s life.

Maud isn’t as uptight as she first appears to be, because there’s a scene in a bar where a very different Maud emerges. She’s literally got her hair down, she’s drinking beer, and looking for some sexual company. One night at the bar, she meets a man (played by Jonathan Milshaw), they exchange looks, and the next thing you know, she’s giving him a hand job in the bathroom. They don’t even bother to find out each other’s names.

And then on the same night, she goes home with another man (played by Turlough Convery) and has sex with him. What’s the name of the man who’s this one-night stand? Christian. Oh, the irony. During their sexual encounter, Maud starts to hallucinate, she has a little bit of freak-out, and Christian tries to calm her down, just so he can keep having sex with her.

Back in Amanda’s home, Maud projects an image of being very religious and modest, almost like a nun. Amanda even jokes that Maude could be Amanda’s “savior.” Amanda senses that Maud is a born-again Christian or a recent convert. Maud confirms that she’s recently become a devout Christian when Amanda asks her about Maud’s spirituality. And when Maud confides in Amanda that she can feel God’s presence, Amanda says she can feel it too. But is Amanda telling the truth or just playing along as a way to amuse herself?

“Saint Maud” is one of those movies where there’s an unreliable narrator, and what might be seen on screen could be a hallucination. As the story goes on, there are scenes of Maud in literal agony and ecstasy as she gets deeper into her religious obsession. Sometimes she pants heavily and writhes on the floor as if she’s in an orgasmic state. Sometimes she engages in some self-harm that might be too hard to watch for people who get easily squeamish.

Clark gives a memorable performance as the tortured Maud, who tries to appear “normal” on the outside, but is falling apart on the inside. Ehle gives a more straightforward performance as Amanda, who has a cruel streak but who also admits her flaws and tries to make amends when she can. It’s obvious from the beginning of the movie that things are not going to end well, but viewers will be curious to see how bad things get.

“Saint Maud” has its gory moments, but most of the movie’s horror has more to do with losing one’s grip on sanity rather than any violent acts that might be in the movie. Glass shows a lot of promise as a director who can tell an intriguing story. Where the movie falls short is in leaving questions unanswered about Maud’s background to give some context of what led her to this point in her life.

There was that incident in her hospital job, but it’s never explained if she discovered religion on her own or was taught. There’s no mention of Maud having any family, friends or love interests. There’s no sense of what kind of upbringing she had or how long she’s had issues with mental health. A little backstory for Maud would’ve gone a long way with this movie.

However, what will keep people interested is the fascinating range of emotions that Maud shows in her present life. She’s one of those “quiet people” whose rage comes out in flashes, from her face distortions when she’s alone, to how she lashes out when things don’t go her way. The visual effects in the movie are used sparingly, but when they’re in the movie, they make an impact.

Some viewers might be surprised by how long it takes before any real violence happens in “Saint Maud.” That would be missing the point of this horror film. This isn’t a dumb slasher flick with a killer on the loose. Sometimes the most terrifying things can happen in the trappings of a sick mind.

A24 released “Saint Maud” in select U.S. cinemas on January 29, 2021. Epix will premiere the movie on February 12, 2021. “Saint Maud” was released in Europe and Canada in 2020.