There are moments when an actor walks on screen and you just sort of know – now there’s a person who I’m going to enjoy watching. By the time Katy O’Brian struts across a gun range in “Love Lies Bleeding,” muscles flexing with a killer smile on her face, you know you’re experiencing one of those moments.
O’Brian plays Jackie, a drifter and aspiring bodybuilder just looking to score enough money to get to a competition in Las Vegas. She rolls into a small, dusty New Mexico town and quickly lands a job at the aforementioned gun range, owned and operated by a man with exceedingly sinister vibes (Ed Harris, sporting an astonishing hairpiece). He asks Jackie if she likes guns, to which she responds no, not really. “Anyone can feel strong hiding behind a piece of metal,” she says. “I prefer to know my own strength.”
And know her own strength she does – within the first 20-ish minutes of Rose Glass’ sweaty erotic thriller, Jackie has had sex with a man for a job, slept and done pull-ups under an overpass, punched a regular at her new gym for being homophobic and taken a returning blow to the face with pride. It’s while she’s nursing that punch that she starts to connect with the gym manager, Lou (Kristen Stewart). The two exchange flirty words and gaze hungrily at each other before Lou offers Jackie some steroids – just a little, to give her an edge for that upcoming competition. The ensuing jab to the butt is like foreplay for these two, but the types of skeletons found in their closets ensure this romance won’t stay peaceful for long.
With “Love Lies Bleeding,” Glass crafts a thriller where love and violence walk hand in hand, a neo noir where the femme fatales hold the center of the frame. Glass – who directed and co-wrote the film along with Weronika Tofilska – delivers a delicious twist of genre filmmaking that’s all grueling physicality, bulging tension and, most of all, great fun….
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