‘Love Lies Bleeding’ Review: Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian in a Queer Romantic Noir That Goes to Extremes
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic There was a time, in the ’90s, when indie film noir thought it was being hip by imitating the trappings of ’40s thrillers — the dark shadows, Venetian blinds and “slinky” femme fatales.
But a true noir never really looks back; it’s always pushing forward, toward fresh new varieties of desire and dread. “Love Lies Bleeding” is like that.
It’s the second feature directed by Rose Glass, the British director of “Saint Maud” (2019), and though it’s made with a powerful sense of style, there’s nothing retro or mannered about it.
It’s set in a small desert town in rural grunge Nevada in 1989, and from the opening moments, which take place at the warehouse workout gym where Lou (Kristen Stewart) toils away as a manager (not too lofty a position — in the first scene, she unplugs a stuffed toiled with her gloved hand), the movie lets you taste the raw Western sleaze of its world as surely as Mailer’s “The Executioner’s Song” did.
