Love Lies Bleeding Pride Special Episode Notes + New Zine
Research and notes from the episode...with an extra offering
‘Love Lies Bleeding’ follows a bodybuilder named Jackie who passes through a small town in New Mexico on her way to a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas. Jackie secures a temporary job at the town’s local gun range after sleeping with one of its sleazy employees named JJ to get a referral. Jackie attends a gym to train, and catches the eye of its reclusive manager, Lou. Jackie tells Lou of her plans, and Lou fatefully offers Jackie steroids, which she injects for the first time. The pair have an instant attraction, and after spending a passionate night together, it is agreed that Jackie will stay with Lou while she’s in town. However, Lou’s family has a criminal past; it turns out the gun range is owned by Lou’s estranged gangster father, Lou Sr, and JJ is revealed to be Lou’s horrifically abusive brother-in-law. Their relationship descends into chaos as the pair try to overcome the sudden whirlwind of violence that ensues.
LOVE LIES BLEEDING AS A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN’S MUSCULAR BODIES
“Kristen Stewart Says ‘Gayest Thing Ever’ Comment Was ‘SILLY’ (Exclusive).” YouTube, Extratv, 4 March 2024
~Interviewee: Katy O’Brian~
“Seeing different types of people on screen. It’s just a different type of body that we don’t get to see on screen, which is really cool. You might have gotten a little bit of it with Vasquez in Aliens and then we never see it again for like 20 years.”
LITERALIZATION AND SUBVERSION OF THE ‘STRONG WOMAN’ TROPE // BODYBUILDING AND OBJECTIFICATION
Peng, Cici. “Love Lies Bleeding: A lesbian body-horror rammed with rage and ’roids.” Dazed, 2024, https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/62506/1/love-lies-bleeding-review-rose-glass-director-interview-kristen-steward-katy.
~Interviewee: Rose Glass~
“I think I’ve always been interested in bodies and the relationships that people have with their own ones, and what those relationships can say about a person’s mindset, how they see themselves, how they see the world. Did they take care of their body? Did they destroy it? The initial thing that started this whole idea off was thinking it would be fascinating to tell a story about a woman who’s trying to be a bodybuilder and how she’s trying to become almost untouchable and strong, but it’s so contradictory because it’s also an aesthetic desire. I’ve always felt this weird disconnect between our brains and our bodies, like in your mind you can feel so grand and encompass so much, and yet on some level we’re also confined to these weird fleshy vessels which can go wrong, be inelegant and suffer.”
Travis, Ben. “Love Lies Bleeding Takes The ‘Strong Female Character’ Trope Literally: ‘There’s Something Punk About A Really Muscular Woman’ – Exclusive Image.” Empire, 2024, https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/love-lies-bleeding-strong-female-character-trope-exclusive/.
For Glass, her second film was a chance to puncture Hollywood’s laziest ideas of the ‘strong female character’ by taking that cliche extremely literally. “Binaries are a bit boring,” the filmmaker says. “It’s all very fertile ground to play with, doing something about a female bodybuilder. It shouldn’t be that shocking to see somebody who looks like these two do in a film – but there’s still something quite punk about a really muscular woman.”
Macabasco, Lisa Wong. “Love Lies Bleeding’s Director And Star On Their Bloody, Wildly Fun Queer Fever Dream.” British Vogue, 2024, https://teamkristensite.blogspot.com/2024/03/rose-glass-and-katy-obrian-talk-to.html.
~Interviewee: Rose Glass~
I’d seen photos from the ’40s or ’50s, before bodybuilding was a competitive sport, at least for women. At that point, strong women were more of a sideshow attraction. These women had amazing ’50s pin-curl hair-dos and incredible muscular physiques, and the visual juxtaposition was intriguing to me. The more I found out about it, the more it seemed like this slightly anarchic but beautiful, strange sport, which is as much a performance art as a sport. It’s an aesthetic sport. So I wondered about the psychology it takes to do something like that, how that can either clash with or spill over into other elements of their life. And falling in love seemed like an appropriately derailing kind of chaos to throw somebody into when they’re otherwise very driven and focused.
→REEM’S NOTES: BODYBUILDING AND FIGHTING
INTERTEXTUAL REFERENCES IN LOVE LIES BLEEDING:
Lou appears reading a 1988 book of short stories by Patrick Califia, “Macho Sluts,” a pioneering work of lesbian B.D.S.M. literature.
→REEM’S NOTES: BODYBUILDING IN 80S LESBIAN EROTICA + HUNTING FOR QUEER HISTORY EASTER EGGS
bodybuilder Kitty Tsui cover of On Our Backs in 1988 (photo series by Jill Posener)
KATY O’BRIAN’S HISTORY AS A REAL-LIFE BODYBUILDER
Macabasco, Lisa Wong. “Love Lies Bleeding’s Director And Star On Their Bloody, Wildly Fun Queer Fever Dream.” British Vogue, 2024, https://teamkristensite.blogspot.com/2024/03/rose-glass-and-katy-obrian-talk-to.html.
~Interviewee: Katy O’Brian~
It takes focus and discipline and can be obsessive. You have a weird relationship with food, where you’re counting and weighing calories. And it can be isolating because you can’t go out and enjoy a meal with your friends – you have to stick to your routine. I’m a live-by-moderation type of person, but I know a lot of people who had liver or kidney failure.
Merritt, Greg. “Bodybuilder Katy O’Brian Stars in ‘Love Lies Bleeding’.” The BarBell, 2024, https://thebarbell.com/katy-o-brian/.
Katy O’Brian competed twice in amateur figure competitions, in 2014 and 2015, but decided not to pursue competition further because of the expense and because she wasn’t willing to do steroids like many other competitors.
“Kristen Stewart, Katy O'Brian and Rose Glass on 'Love Lies Bleeding' | AP interview.” YouTube, Associated Press, 29 April 2024.
~Interviewee: Katy O’Brian~
“Even the workout equipment: [the crew] got it from the 80s. And so it’s made for men because women didn’t work out in the 80s. They did aerobics – Jane Fonda. So you had to adjust your own height to try to figure out how to get the right muscle because it’s just bigger equipment.”
DRUGS + LOVE AS A DRUG + LOVE AND ADDICTION
THE GENRE-BENDING ELEMENTS OF LOVE LIES BLEEDING
Venning, Laura. “Love Lies Bleeding Review.” Empire, 2024, https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/love-lies-bleeding/.
There’s no question that this film is a bit messy, veering from noir to revenge thriller to body horror to pitch-black comedy via moments of magic realism. But there’s never a dull moment; Love Lies Bleeding pulses with an irresistible energy and potent eroticism.
Macabasco, Lisa Wong. “Love Lies Bleeding’s Director And Star On Their Bloody, Wildly Fun Queer Fever Dream.” British Vogue, 2024, https://teamkristensite.blogspot.com/2024/03/rose-glass-and-katy-obrian-talk-to.html.
~Interviewee: Rose Glass~
I suggested people should watch David Cronenberg’s Crash, Showgirls, and Saturday Night Fever, and the tiny Venn-diagram crossover was the cinematic universe the film might take place in – dark, melodramatic, sexy films. I tried to avoid watching the more Americana cornerstones of Thelma & Louise and Wild at Heart until after we’d made it so I didn’t get too referential.
THE ACT OF QUEERING NOIR THRILLERS + QUEER PERIOD DRAMAS
Macabasco, Lisa Wong. “Love Lies Bleeding’s Director And Star On Their Bloody, Wildly Fun Queer Fever Dream.” British Vogue, 2024, https://teamkristensite.blogspot.com/2024/03/rose-glass-and-katy-obrian-talk-to.html.
~Interviewee: Rose Glass~
There’s a lot of queer films in particular, and a certain type of tasteful period lesbian film, where all the looking is done very secretly and with longing in a sense of forbiddenness. So I enjoyed that here they’re both more horny and blatant. When Lou sees Jackie across the gym, if I’m referencing anything there, it’s the bit in The Mask where Jim Carrey sees Cameron Diaz across the bank. It was fun to lean into the silliness.
Peng, Cici. “Love Lies Bleeding: A lesbian body-horror rammed with rage and ’roids.” Dazed, 2024, https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/62506/1/love-lies-bleeding-review-rose-glass-director-interview-kristen-steward-katy.
~Interviewee: Rose Glass~
“Wera and I really wanted the end to go more into that dreamlike territory. We did try writing a much more grounded version of the ending but it just felt like a bit of a cop out and we both desperately missed giant Jackie. And to me it seemed like just the most natural conclusion of where the film’s heading. This endless pursuit of more and more. It’s only got one place to go. It’s either total annihilation or she turns into a giant. And of course, it’s that feeling of their love which seems invincible and larger than life.”
Brody, Richard.“‘Love Lies Bleeding’ and the Perils of Genre.” The New Yorker, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/love-lies-bleeding-movie-review.
…Glass nods to a film that relies on similar material but achieves far more with it—the first-generation noir classic “Bigger Than Life,” from 1956, which has the distinction of being, in effect, a primordial ’roid-rage movie. Directed by Nicholas Ray and based on reporting, in this magazine, by Berton Roueché, the movie stars James Mason as a schoolteacher named Ed who is given a diagnosis of a vascular disease that would likely be fatal were it not for a new “miracle drug,” cortisone. But the medicine has side effects, and Ed experiences grandiose delusions that ultimately make him violent. Ray symbolizes this derangement with startling images, at one point using forced perspective to make Ed appear taller than a school building. Taking a cue from Ray, Glass briefly, ingeniously depicts the steroid-addled Jackie as an actual giant able to grab people as if they were dolls.
BODY HORROR (JAW SCENE + MUSCLES)
MON FEM ELEMENTS:
JJ’S MURDER = JACKIE AS A FEMME CASTRATRICE (i.e. vigilante killing)
LOU SR/ JR FINAL SHOWDOWN; GUN IN MOUTH (penetrative)
JACKIE VOMITING LOU HALLUCINATION = MONSTROUS BIRTH (see below)
VOMIT/BIRTH SCENE ANALYSED: DIRECTOR INTERVIEW
Peng, Cici. “Love Lies Bleeding: A lesbian body-horror rammed with rage and ’roids.” Dazed, 2024, https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/62506/1/love-lies-bleeding-review-rose-glass-director-interview-kristen-steward-katy.
Weronica, and I were very much railing against the idea that female characters are expected to be morally righteous and make people feel comfortable. Lou and Jackie have this monstrous rage and that turns each other on, and their love for each other is extreme and all over the place. One second, they are fighting on the streets, another second, they are embracing each other. I’m interested in seeing women making terrible decisions and really making a mess of things. When Jackie throws up and gives birth to Lou in this dream-like sequence, we were thinking of how lovers consume each other in this kind of dependent relationship. When Wera and I were first writing it, the idea was of a Pygmalion kind of thing where one woman creates the other and controls her, then it all gets out of hand. We were not trying to let them off the hook easily for this insane love.
SEX AND DEATH // SEX AND VIOLENCE // DOMESTIC ABUSE
Ide, Wendy. “Love Lies Bleeding review – Kristen Stewart keeps it real in deliciously lurid outlaw romance.” The Guardian, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/05/love-lies-bleeding-review-rose-glass-kristen-stewart-katy-obrian-deliciously-lurid-outlaw-romance.
Concern for Beth’s safety is why Lou can’t bring herself to leave this spiteful small town, despite numerous reasons to do so (first of these being her gun-toting estranged father, played with reptilian menace by Ed Harris). But I suspect that Glass intends Beth and JJ to be more than just the dramatic device that unleashes the film’s dark heart and violent impulses. They also serve as a kind of twisted mirror image of Lou and Jackie’s amour fou and a cautionary warning that any relationship this thoroughly soaked in blood can’t, ultimately, end well, however invincible the partnership and the passion that drives it might seem at the time.
Tallerico, Brian. “Love Lies Bleeding.”, Roger Ebert, 2024, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/love-lies-bleeding-movie-review-2024.
It’s important that Lou isn’t a victim in this tale, and Stewart nails a character who is somehow both confident and vulnerable at the same time. She’s the cleaner (and I also love how much “Love Lies Bleeding” focuses on how acts of violence have a very practical aftermath that someone has to clean up.) It’s a great performance.
MORALLY COMPLEX CHARACTERS:
Travis, Ben. “Love Lies Bleeding Takes The ‘Strong Female Character’ Trope Literally: ‘There’s Something Punk About A Really Muscular Woman’ – Exclusive Image.” Empire, 2024, https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/love-lies-bleeding-strong-female-character-trope-exclusive/.
That punk energy of Glass and her performers found its way into everything that Love Lies Bleeding would become. “We are constantly watching movies about women triumphing over oppressive forces because we’re somehow ethically or morally superior,” says Stewart. “It’s like, ‘No, fuck that. I’m so sick of that. I’m so sick of that fucking movie.’ And so this one just felt like we were allowed to pull our dress over our head and run down the street, use the boys’ toys and shove them in their faces – and then also be like, ‘We’re nothing like you.’”
CHARACTERISATION (NEGATIVE REVIEW THAT WE DEBATED ON THE EPISODE)
Brody, Richard.“‘Love Lies Bleeding’ and the Perils of Genre.” The New Yorker, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/love-lies-bleeding-movie-review.
The movie’s incuriosity about the characters’ larger ideas and experiences dulls one of its enticing peculiarities. “Love Lies Bleeding” is a period piece, set in 1989 [...] Yet Lou and Jackie have nothing to say about the events of their time and show little interest in the wider world.
In this regard, “Love Lies Bleeding” is very much a movie of the current moment; it resembles such acclaimed recent releases as “Past Lives” and “All of Us Strangers” in its presentation of protagonists whose intellectual and cultural lives are portrayed only to the extent that they serve the plot. Today, the labor of movies is increasingly being outsourced—to viewers. Many films are basically kits that require the audience to do the work not merely of interpretation but of characterization, based on a handful of clues. For Lou, these details are her sisterly bond with Beth and her criminal one with the father she hates; as for Jackie, she was adopted at thirteen—a bullied fat kid who therefore learned to fight, and then fled the religious narrowness of her home town in rural Oklahoma. Those specifics frame “Love Lies Bleeding” as a game of cinematic Mad Libs, inviting viewers to fill in the blanks with whatever traits, interests, inclinations, enthusiasms, and backstories they like.
SEX AS THE CENTRE OF THE NARRATIVE (NEGATIVE REVIEW THAT WE DEBATED ON THE EPISODE)
Brody, Richard.“‘Love Lies Bleeding’ and the Perils of Genre.” The New Yorker, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/love-lies-bleeding-movie-review.
Amid the generalized atmosphere of seaminess, the specifics of the main characters’ lives get elided. Lou’s traumatic past is examined only as much as is necessary to establish, in a series of quick flashbacks, her participation in her father’s crimes. The movie, cutting from one plot point to the next, doesn’t give the two women much space or time for the sorts of offhand conversation that can reveal character; they share few confidences and disclose no observations or opinions, no tastes or distastes. What they do share is sexual desire. Their mutual attraction is the movie’s prime force. Most of the sex scenes, while forthright, are conventional, with rounds of writhing and panting, but one of them, rooted in the couple’s explicit talk about pleasure, is unusual and acute. Ultimately, though, desire seems to be all that defines the women’s bond.
COMPARISONS TO ‘SAINT MAUD’ + THE BUDDING ROSE GLASS CANON
Tallerico, Brian. “Love Lies Bleeding.”, Roger Ebert, 2024, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/love-lies-bleeding-movie-review-2024.
Just as in “Saint Maud,” “Love Lies Bleeding” is about obsession. That stunning debut was about obsession with faith and religion. This one is about obsession with all the things that make people feel powerful, particularly guns and muscles. Glass sets up characters with distinct goals—Jackie wants to win, Lou wants Jackie, her dad wants power, etc.—and then she bounces them off each other in increasingly gonzo narrative twists. What elevates it is how much of a grip Glass maintains on her filmmaking through the chaos. Even as these characters are practically spinning off into the sky, Rose Glass is in complete control.
KRISTEN STEWART IS A *GREAT* ACTRESS AND WHY I *WILL* DIE ON THIS HILL
Ide, Wendy. “Love Lies Bleeding review – Kristen Stewart keeps it real in deliciously lurid outlaw romance.” The Guardian, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/05/love-lies-bleeding-review-rose-glass-kristen-stewart-katy-obrian-deliciously-lurid-outlaw-romance.
Rather, it’s the unstudied, naturalistic quality of her performances, which are seeded with little glitchy details and gestures – the way she rakes her fingers through her fringe; the moment when she nervously wipes her nose on the sleeve of her T-shirt. Small things, perhaps, but these seemingly unconscious tics humanise her characters. They are recognisable, relatable moments of social awkwardness that anchor her in (or at least near) the real world. It’s a quality that adds to all her performances, but which is particularly invaluable in British director Rose Glass’s second picture, the deliciously lurid and thrillingly degenerate outlaw romance Love Lies Bleeding. When the rest of the movie launches itself headlong into outlandish, almost cartoonish excess, Lou is plausibly three-dimensional and grounded. The rooted realism that underpins Stewart’s performance offers a necessary balance to some of the more untrammelled impulses in Glass’s follow-up to her impressive debut feature, Saint Maud (2020).
Rapold, Nicolas. “Love Lies Bleeding: this bodybuilding melodrama is a film of passionate extremes.” BFI, 2024, https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/love-lies-bleeding-this-bodybuilding-melodrama-film-passionate-extremes.
BFI Lou’s own unsavoury past, working with or for her father, begins to emerge from the shadows. Stewart adds her ever-valuable anxious micro-rhythms and out-there choices – like manically twirling a cigarette during one tense scene – but it’s tough to put across a backstory which is tenuously evoked.
SPECIAL OFFERING: THE MONSTROUS FEMININE X REEM PRIDE OR DIE ZINE
Inspired by Love Lies Bleeding, inside this zine you will find articles on queer monstrosity, muscle mommy kinks, zodiac ride or dies, the Rose Glass and Kstew canon, 80s synth pop and women’s history of bodybuilding.