Love Lies Bleeding

Directed by Rose Glass

Written by Rose Glass & Weronika Tofilska

Body builder Jackie (Katy O’Brian) is passing through town as she hitchhikes towards Las Vegas for a competition. Here she meets gym manager Lou Langston (Kristen Stewart) and her family. She moves in with Lou, while getting herself a job with Lou’s estranged father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris). But when Jackie gets wrapped up in Lou’s family problems, started by her sister Beth’s (Jena Malone), domestic problems with abusive boyfriend J.J. (Dave Franco) her life turns upside down and spirals into twisted love, lies, manipulation, drugs and murder. 

Love Lies Bleeding is classed as a romance, but I’m not sure that does this very twisted look at love justice. This was a film I struggled with for about two thirds of it as I never quite settled with the story it was trying to tell. But like many a a well made film, as its final act plays out, it brings together all of what has gone before into a cohesive piece of smart story telling.

This is no standard love story and it presents a lot of questions about each of the characters in the film. Who is using who? Is there love or is it just emotional manipulation for gain? Are any of the characters who they seem?

Set in 1989, it’s gritty and dirty capturing the feel and films of the time. It is tense and as stakes rise so does the violence, moving from a film about realtionships, to one of violence and murder, with an almost humourous increase in body count! Jackie is at the center of it, perhaps the most manipulated of all and at the center of a complex relationship between father and daughter that is not what it seems.

It took a while to draw me in, but the pay off, in the end, was worth it.

Love Lies Bleeding is a dark and very twisted version of a romance. It took a while to draw me in, but what you end up with is an intriguing story of lies, manipulation and violence, where you’re never sure who is using who or for what. A slow burn of a film that pays off in the end.