📆 Opens wide on Friday, March 8th
If you haven’t seen Saint Maud, writer/director Rose Glass’ debut feature, get yourself to Amazon Prime right now and hit play. In it, the thin line between religious fervor and untethered psychosis plays out against a caregiver-patient dynamic along the English seaside, with one hell of a final scene. There’s an entire generation of people who love costar Jennifer Ehle who’ll see anything she’s in, but I fear the pandemic dampened Maud’s intended reach. Check it out, for real.
Now with an A24 calling card at the ready, Glass presents a blank check of a psychosexual fever dream with Love Lies Bleeding, a.k.a. the film that already beat the internet to a couple thousand entries of Kristen Stewart slash fiction. K-Stew is a gym manager in 1980s New Mexico, actress/martial artist Katy O’Brian (the PNW’s own Z Nation) is a Vegas-bound competitive bodybuilder, and when their orbits and bodies collide, nobody is safe. Especially not since Stewart’s father is a small-town weapons-running crime boss played with rattling sleaze by Ed Harris, who gives his most bug-nuts performance since 1987’s Walker. (Incidentally, if you come out of this movie wanting more surreality in your cinema, that Alex Cox movie is a great follow-up.)
Love Lies Bleeding is an aggressive, hyperviolent, steroid-injected noir of the highest order, and very much not for the squeamish. Or the homophobic. Go away, homophobes. You already have roughly 90% of American pop culture locked up. Go watch Blue Bloods.
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