Love Lies Bleeding is a relentlessly gripping thriller

★★★★ | Rose Glass | In select theaters May 31st

Love Lies Bleeding, the newest film from Rose Glass, is about control: How we rarely have it, and, when we do, how we don’t know what to do with it. It’s also about lust, which we so often mistake for love, and how that, too, is a form of control. It’s a seedy, sweaty film, full of sex and violence, yet inexplicably tender in a way that made me wonder about the definitions of love.

Kristen Stewart plays Lou, a taciturn, difficult owner of a gym in a town best experienced by driving away from it. We first see her with her arm elbow deep in shit, and her situation rarely improves. Part of that is circumstance, a lot of it is choice. Lou isn’t one for planning. She’s a bull rushing at the red flag, ready for a fight with the world whether it’s necessary or not.

One night, she meets Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a bodybuilder dreaming of the spotlight in Vegas. Like Lou, Jackie only finds her feet when she hits rock bottom. They’re perfect for each other in the way that fire loves petrol. Soon, Lou is making Jackie eggs and dosing her with steroids. There’s an oblivious desperation to their plans. As long as they’re together, they can fuck and fight their way out of anything.

The town is unofficially run by Lou’s father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris); a figure so outrageous he crosses from comical to horrifying. Lou’s sister, Beth (Jena Malone), is dating a sleazy abuser. There’s an unspoken agreement that it’s best nobody does anything about it. Everyone rolls with the punches.

Love Lies Bleeding isn’t a big film in terms of plot, though it spins itself into knots before the end. It has the frenetic energy of small lives leading big drama. Because that’s all you can achieve in these dead ends. Everyone knows they’ve gone as far as they can, and Glass captures the desperation and anger beautifully. When the smoke clears, it becomes evident how little is accomplished in the end. The film has the energy of a Coen Brothers story, filtered through the dreamlike haziness of David Lynch’s Americana.

This is only the second feature for Rose Glass, yet she’s already one of our most exciting new voices. She has an innate understanding of desperation, passion, and the human body, and a fearlessness in depicting each of them. In Love Lies Bleeding, she strips the vanity from bodybuilding and emphasizes how, in the end, our illusion of control fools no one. Even our bodies will betray us one day. There’s an impish delight in the way Glass prods the audience. Amplifying the sounds and extreme close-ups, which give the pursuit of perfection a sickening glow that permeates every frame.

Stewart and O’Brian are tremendous in the leads. They’re always believable, even as the film veers into the hallucinatory. I’m not sure that we’re supposed to like either one of these broken people. But it’s hard to not empathize with such blind conviction. Every winner is a loser who got lucky. Glass is transfixed by that illusive mile between success and failure where her films take place.

All they can do is drive as fast as they can and go out on their own terms. It might be an illusion, but even that is control in its own way.