Sundance 2024: Anything goes in the genre mashup 'Love Lies Bleeding'

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Love Lies Bleeding
4 out of 5 Stars
Director: Rose Glass
Writer: Rose Glass
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris, Dave Franco, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov
Category: Midnight
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Action, Thriller
Tickets, Online Screenings:Click Here

Festival Synopsis: Reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Las Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.

Review: There comes a point in many unconventional or experimental narratives where the audience is inevitably asked to stay on the wagon or abandon ship. “Love Lies Bleeding” asks this question numerous times. It is a film that goes to extremes as it leaps from one genre to the next. It shouldn’t work. On paper, the script must look like a mess. On the screen, it is an entrancing trainwreck. You can’t look away as the cars jump off the rails. There is something exhilarating about a film that takes risks and completely sticks the landing.

“Love Lies Bleeding” begins as a romantic drama between Lou (Kristen Stewart) and Jackie (Katy O’Brian). Jackie, a bodybuilder hitchhiking her way to Las Vegas for a competition, temporarily puts down roots in a small New Mexico town. Lou works at the local gym where Jackie inevitably ends up at. The pair instantly become inseparable.

At this point the film transitions into an erotic drama, before moving on to an erotic thriller because of Lou’s mysterious past. Soon after, Jackie’s choices send the narrative in another direction.

In most reviews this would be the part where I lambast the film for not knowing what it is. Do you want to be campy or taken seriously? Are you gritty and reality based or are you prone to hallucinatory sequences and magical realism?

“Love Lies Bleeding” would tell you that it is all of those things and then some. It’s not wrong and it does a ridiculously good job of preparing the audience as it slowly pushes the envelope. By the film’s end director-writer Rose Glass can take the viewer into places they wouldn’t have gone to in its first act.

How good is “Love Lies Bleeding?” It is the only film that I’ve seen at Sundance this year that had the audience’s full attention from start to finish. The buzz of the crowd as I left the venue was amazing. This is why I keep coming back to the Sundance Film Festival.