thread of gooily psychedelic lesbian bodybuilding crime dramedy LOVE LIES BLEEDING (2024), starring kristen stewart & katy o’brian, directed by rose glass

just got out of this and a film could not be more me if you dipped a brush in my mind and painted a canvas with it. a movie about relationships, how the terrible, ingrown ones keep you staked in place and how really falling in love with someone can seem to finally clear a path out for you, even if that path is littered with the dead bodies of everyone you used to know. also a movie about how getting involved with someone new just totally ensnares you in their shit!!!! a movie about injecting your body with so many growth hormones that you feel yourself exploding out of your self. a movie where people sweat and suck toes and eat bugs and throw up goo. five fucking stars go see it!!!

gooily

also it was super fucking hot!!!!

my friend mélanie is really into this film, she says it's a great film to take a gal pal or a roomie to

i'll have to ask around to see if any of my gal pals are interested

oh god "any of my gal pals" that makes it sound like i get around way more than i do

i know shrimping wasn't literally invented by quentin tarantino but whenever i see mention of it happening in a film i can't help but think of it

i'm not personally into shrimping, but it still makes me mad about stupid cishet guys colonizing shrimping

i saw this again the other night and wrote something about or maybe more inspired by it

https://letterboxd.com/unbornwhiskey/film/love-lies-bleeding-2024/2/

it was just as good/horny as it was the first time. best fingering scene in non-pornographic cinema??? i haven't seen better

Yeah it's pretty great. Also amazing music choices. Nothing anachronistic, setting is 1989, everything was released before then -- a Goodfellas variant but even more crazily recontextualized thanks to the diagetic drops. Hearing Gina X Performance's "Nice Mover" in a bar scene was a trip but I about lost my shit when a bodybuilding routine begins and thought to myself "Is that COLOURBOX?" (It was indeed Colourbox.)

“mutant man,” nona hendryx, gina x performance, colourbox, martin rev…. soundtrack is def so deliberately put together that it is its own character in the film

Imagine my shock at hearing "Transformatino" but not, say, "With Every Beta of My Heart."

Beat even!

Anyway, the pacing gets pokey in the last third, and I preferred Drive-Away Dolls, but, wow, two lewd lesbian comedies out in the same month!

Truly a moment. Plus this and Lisa Frankenstein made it a mini-1989 boom too!

Also even though it was just in the trailer using "Smalltown Boy" in that was amazing too.

and, boy, does O'Brian look like Rachel Ticotin!

ivy so otm. this was so much fun

i didn't like this at all but don't want to hate on it, because i'm generally in favour of this kind of trashy messy fun and lots of the things i didn't like are perhaps idiosyncratic to me; i just can't get into kristen stewart's acting (had the same problem with the last cronenberg) also the neon pink and blue underlit grainy matte color grading/cinematography has reached a level of saturation where it gets a knee jerk neg reaction. the (awesome) poster had me thinking it would be an erotic thriller so i was surprised it was more of a early tarantino-style hyperviolent "everyone fucks up" plot with romantic leads versus the creepier/perverted psychological verhoeven style

stewart is once again acting with her fingers but its to phenomenal effect here, felt every twitch of her brain in trying to give up smoking as her whole world collapsed

this is the best perf I’ve seen Stewart give by a long stretch

up there with personal shopper for me

Spencer aside, I've enjoyed Stewart in just about every picture she's been in. She has a talent for looking simultaneously spooked and alert and sad in character.

looking forward to checking this out tbh

This is great

Ed Harris's character was much better than I expected

I thought this was wonderful. The end was such a great pay off

another great thing: shot of the trash full of cigarettes and egg yolks

Blu/4K release, includes commentary from Glass and Weronika Tofilkska and various other things.

Now on Max.

This Ruled

Yeah I watched it the other night and had a good time

Watched it last night. I really liked almost all of it — the look really worked for me — except for the part where O'Brian becomes a giantess. It felt like something they came up with because they'd tried filming a conventional fight scene with her and Ed Harris and it didn't work. On the other hand, the part where O'Brian barfs out Kristen Stewart at the bodybuilding competition was great. And the last scene is amazing, because you realize that even after all this, Jackie still really has no idea who her girlfriend is.

I didn't know any of the songs on the soundtrack (I recognized Grace Jones' voice instantly, of course) so I assumed most of them were new tracks by Boy Harsher-type acts; interesting to know that they were period-accurate.

I recognized Grace Jones' voice instantly, of course

lol

Yeah I'd put it up there with Dead Man's Shoes for not landing the denouement scene well. Otherwise this was great, Ed Harris and Kristin Stewart absolutely titanic and I love a film where the protagonists ride off into the sunset and you really can't figure out how anything good could happen to them from this point on.

Was thrilled that Colourbox’s ‘The Moon is Blue’ was so prominently used in this.

Definitely a great choice, like I muttered upthread. Probability in real life, low. Possibility? Could happen! Same with the rest of the songs. Also kinda interesting that this and Lisa Frankenstein, which I also liked, came out essentially next to each other, had a similar 1989 setting and leaned into alt-interzone hard, musically.

This was fucking great and ivy's review is easily the best thing I've read about it.