A24 and Film4 bring us a noir thriller starring Kristen Stewart.

Stewart plays Lou, the manager of a gym where she meets and falls in love with the body builder Jackie, played with roided ferocity by Katy O’ Brian.
Unfortunately, Stewart’s family is as criminally unsavoury as it gets and things don’t go swimmingly for the two of them. 
That may be an understatement.

Tonally reminiscent of Red Rock West, The Last Seduction with a touch of U Turn and set in 1989 in New Mexico it has a 90’s feel to it. It is kinetic, exciting and raw.

Director Rose Glass follows up her excellent debut film Saint Maud, here again on writing and directing duties and giving us a taut thriller with some nasty characters and some connected to them by blood and circumstance. Switching genres with seeming ease, here she does steamy and sweaty thriller with skill. You can almost feel the heat coming through the screen via the Mexican setting and the chemistry between the two lovers.

Katy O’ Brian and Kristen Stewart in Love Lies Bleeding

This is ostensibly a love story against all the odds and Stewart and O’ Brian convincingly play the lovers and as in most noirs they find themselves in sticky situations, mainly of their own doings.

We get a menacing Ed Harris, bald on top with long hair hanging to his sides, creeping up the joint playing a pretty messed up dude who loves insects and Dave Franco playing against type as the wife-beating brother-in-law of Stewart’s Lou, Jena Malone as Lou’s abused sister and special mention goes to Anna Baryshnikov (daughter of famed ballet dancer Mikhail) as the always doting on Lou, Daisy, who is absolutely brilliant. 

Everyone’s a winner, at least in the acting stakes.

Ed Harris in Love Lies Bleeding

A24 continues to deliver films outside the mainstream and thank goodness for them.

On the surface, this film travels well-worn roads but having a female couple as the main lovers bucks the usual trend and gives us a satisfying queer thriller or queer noir if you will, not seen at this level since the Wachowski’s brilliant Bound.

Rose Glass delivers a very entertaining thriller with some unexpected flourishes that takes the viewer on a journey that is definitely not the norm.
Much much more power to her for that.