Love Lies Bleeding-Rose Glass

Unlike the sister lesbian flick on the heels of Love Lies Bleeding (pancake flop Drive-Away Dolls) Love Lies Bleeding was a tremendous feature that I enjoyed very much.

Pulp flowed well beyond the brim and it was obvious from the outset that Rose Glass, the director, knew exactly the type of feature that she wished to show, and I highly doubt there was much compromise along the way.

Love Lies Bleeding also was the first time I had seen a Kristen Stewart film. I have only ever read Twilight, but have never seen any of the movies, nor anything else in her catalog. Rose Glass, Katy O'Brian, Anna Baryshnikov and Dave Franco also were new comers for me whom I had either never heard of before, or I maybe have seen something that they were affiliated with and just didn't realize it.

Everyone was fantastic in their role and I really enjoyed the way Rose Glass let this story unfold. She didn't wait too long to let the action unfurl and once it did there was scarcely a moment I wasn't glued to the screen.

Gritty as a mo'fucka, brutal death scenes, heavy synth on the soundtrack, set in the 80's, and extreme realism pulsing throughout every single scene. Prime ingredients that Rose masterfully mixed together to whip up, what I expect the future to consider as a cult classic.

Two aspects particularly impressed me.

First off was the genuine chemistry between Jackie and Lou. Without question, their romance was steamy at points. But the key with which Rose was able to utilize the eroticism lay in the fact that she didn't exploit this portion of their relationship and then pretend the other up's and downs that come with a relationship between two different souls venturing on similarly rocky terrain in their personal frontiers doesn't exist. No. Rose kept the motor running on every single bump within the tumultuous rollercoaster that was Jackie and Lou's hasty relationship.

And it worked beautifully.

This could have easily been a feature that centered around a straight couple as well. In this case, the main characters just happened to be lesbians. Or, at least, in a lesbian relationship. Rose didn't shy away from this fact, but at the same time, didn't overly focus on it either to distract from the story itself. A skill that rarely is executed correctly.

A great duo that reminded me a bit of Hilary Swank and Chloe Sevigny in Boys Don't Cry.

The other thing that really impressed me was Kristen Stewart's skills as an actress.

Oftentimes, you see a young actor whose rocket to fame came at the expense of a cookie cutter television show or movie that pandered to the masses which they are desperate to move on from, and, in turn, take on exceptionally riske roles to speed up the process of removing that family friendly cloak. Jessica Biel and James Van Der Beek in Rules of Attraction, Maccauley Caulkin in Party Monster, Miley Cyrus's performance at the 2013 MTV Music Video awards are good examples.

Sometimes this works to produce nothing but embarrassing results (in the case of Miley). But others, like the aforementioned, usually succeed in moving on from the Dawson's Creek/Seventh Heaven imagery that plagues their persons.

With Kristen Stewart though, it was very obvious that any traces of the innocently seduced vampire damsel Bella had long since been shed. I caught no notes of an actress desperately trying to move forward by jumping into ultraviolence, only a young woman at the apex of her career, confident in her choice of roles and her ability to execute them.

The only knock by my account that Love Lies Bleeding racked up was the ending, which was a bit off-track and a tad hasty for my liking, but it is only a small one. Grade A on every level.

Stars: ****

Verdict: Watch

Cousins: Boy's Don't Cry, Blood Simple, Thelma and Louise, True Romance, Natural Born Killers