AMERICAN MUSCLE

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

After a scorching debut with Saint Maud, filmmaker Rose Glass returns with a horny, brawny, magical-realist tale of romance, regret and ’roids with Love Lies Bleeding. She and her cast tell Total Film about making a ‘strong woman’ story with a twist…

Kristen Stewart is telling Total Film about the appeal of her new movie, Love Lies Bleeding, and her description doesn’t pull any punches. ‘There was something so nice about the nightmare fantasy of, you know, throat-fucking your evil dad with your girlfriend, and running off into the clouds,’ chuckles Stewart over Zoom from her LA home as her dog, Cole, barks up a storm. It’s days after the first of two films starring the actor has bowed at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and Stewart, back in LA to shoot the cover of Rolling Stone, is trying to describe the allure of Rose Glass’ heightened-reality crime thriller; a film that promises to make audiences blanch as much as Maud’s thumb tacks in shoes. It’s a tale that includes bug eating, fingering, poo fishing, monstrous evolution and a luridly violent scene that is literally jaw-dropping. ‘She creates a vibe, doesn’t she?’ Stewart asks with admiration. ‘She really does know how to build something – an entire world to immerse yourself in.’

Certainly, Glass made windswept Scarborough a creepy, foreboding location for a cautionary narrative of frenzy, infatuation and the fearsome power of driven women in Saint Maud. Stewart saw the 2020 lockdown hit and knew she wanted to work with its creator. ‘We’ve really just started to allow women to make films in the scheme of things, if you really zoom out. We’re not encouraged to make icky things. It’s like, everyone needs to fill their marginal-content quota with affirmations or something. Rose definitely didn’t feel inclined to be affected by that pressure. It was almost like it pushed her in a different and new direction. I was like, “Fuck, this person has got it.”’

British director Glass is too humble to name-drop the numerous stars, directors and producers who reached out to her in the wake of her fiery calling card (‘I had some very surreal Zooms – “Oh, this very famous person is on my laptop”’) but she was keen to try a new process with her second film.

‘I took the decision to take [the success of Saint Maud] as a liberating thing and a springboard to leap wholeheartedly and confidently into something and not think too much about it, because otherwise probably that’s when the terror sinks in,’ Glass says, now sporting cropped hair that makes her look (perhaps fittingly) like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby. ‘Writing Saint Maud by myself was a quite an isolating, stressful experience. As much as I’m happy with how it turned out, I think going into this next one, I was maybe nervous about getting back into that again. So I knew I wanted to co-write, and wanted to have fun doing it.’

‘I KNEW I WANTED THE TONE TO BE QUITE PULPY, DARKLY COMIC AND VIOLENT’

ROSE GLASS

Teaming up with writer-director Weronika Tofilska, whom she went to a film school with, Glass began to explore the story of an 80s female bodybuilder who might spin out of control as she prepped for competition. ‘I went to [Tofilska] with a really embryonic version of what then became Love Lies Bleeding, and we just spent several months locked up in a room together, brainstorming, mapping out the story, and just seeing where it went – trying to make each other laugh and surprise each other. I knew what I wanted the tone to be, and the world, which was something quite pulpy, darkly comic and violent. People behaving badly and making terrible life decisions. A romance that sort of goes spectacularly wrong – or right, depending on how you look at it.’

FLEX AND VIOLENCE

That romance, then, is the instant attraction that ignites between quiet gym manager Lou (Stewart) and musclebulging drifter Jackie (Katy O’Brian) in a dusty 80s Albuquerque crossroads town. Lou, tamped down by family trauma (dad played by Ed Harris, sis by Jena Malone, rat-tailed brother-in-law by Dave Franco) and fishing turds out of the abused gym loos, experiences love at first sight when confident, sexy Jackie prowls into the weights area. Jackie is on her way to hoped-for bodybuilding stardom in Vegas and will do anything to transform, even if that means losing her head. And though the women get hot and heavy immediately, their burgeoning love is threatened by the local mob and a crime of passion. There are guns, steroids, rock canyons and a lot of cleaning bleach involved…

‘I liked exploring the qualities that somebody who does bodybuilding would have to possess, and the different ways they had the potential to be misguided or manipulated or abused by other people in their life – Jackie’s got all this strength, energy and drive,’ says Glass. ‘There are parallels between Jackie’s character and Maud. They’re both trying to transform themselves, and arguably not in the most responsible ways.’

No spoilers here, but let’s just say that Jackie hulks out in prep for her spotlight in Las Vegas… And throughout the writing process, Glass had one actor in mind to embody skittish Lou. ‘Kristen was the dream casting for that role, while the script was still being written, and before we had financiers on board. Obviously, you’re going through the exercise of imagining, “If she says no, who would we go for?” I was very nervous and I was very glad that she said yes, because I’m not sure what we would have done otherwise.’

‘GETTING TO WORK WITH SOMEONE WHO IS ALSO QUEER, WHO DOESN’T FIND THE IDEA OF BEING WITH A WOMAN DISGUSTING, WAS A RELIEF’

KATY O’BRIAN

The concept intrigued Stewart. ‘When [Glass] told me the idea for her follow-up film, I was really scared to touch it,’ the actor admits. ‘I didn’t want to let her down. ‘She told me that she had been feeling the effects of all the many conversations that happened in the wake of such an incredible first film. She was like, “Yeah, everyone’s like, ‘Make a movie about a strong woman, a strong lady. Blah blah blah blah.’ So I wrote a movie about a really strong lady.” I just thought it was kind of petulant and hilarious and exactly what I wanted to do even before I read the script. And when I read it, I was so impressed. It’s just so many different things that don’t normally go together. I mean, technically, on paper, it’s a crime thriller. She posits life and violence, but small violences – the little things that make Lou hardened. I loved the movie because I loved Lou so much, and I really vouched for her, and I really wanted her to be a good guy – but things just aren’t that simple.’

With Lou taken care of, Glass had to find her Jackie, a task she initially thought would be a ‘discovery’ role for an untested athlete. ‘That’s quite difficult, it turns out,’ the writer-director laughs. ‘We saw a lot of tapes. There’s obviously a little bit of pressure at times to go for a more famous actor, and get them to transform and get into shape. It would take months and months, which we didn’t have, and then you start having really weird conversations about: “Maybe body doubles and CGI?” Then quite close to the beginning of production we got one of Katy’s tapes. And it was just like, “Thank God. I think we’ve found her.”’

O’Brian had an athletic and martial-arts background but had been acting in projects such as The Mandalorian and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. She recognised Jackie immediately: ‘I just knew that it was about a queer bodybuilder. I was like, “Well, I’ve done bodybuilding competitions. I know that. She’s from the Midwest. I’m from the Midwest. And we’re both queer. So, cool.” I fell in love with it right away, and I was like, “I have to get this part.” I thought I have to do it even more, because I have to A) show people that I’m a serious actor, but B) this is the kind of art that I’ve wanted to make for so long and have not had the opportunities to do.’

She aced numerous auditions and a key chemistry read with Stewart, booking the role only weeks before production. Though it shouldn’t be noteworthy, it meant that a queer story would be told by queer actors. ‘The authenticity is going to be there when you’ve both had those experiences,’ O’Brian nods over Zoom, her wife moving around their house in the background. ‘I’ve worked with a girl who was straight and we were supposed to do a kissing scene. She was so thoroughly uncomfortable with the concept, or the idea, of touching me that it made me feel gross. So getting to work with someone who’s also queer, who doesn’t find the idea of being with a woman disgusting, it was a relief. And you have an unspoken understanding of what this is like. But I love that this isn’t a story about us coming out. It’s not a story where she’s with a man, and I take her away. It’s a story about two women who fall in love, and that’s it.’

Casting Stewart and O’Brian also allowed the actors to subvert their own on-screen personas, according to O’Brian. ‘Kristen’s gotten to play these really typically feminine characters. And with Lou, she’s more macho. She’s playing it tough, but is also really awkward and quirky. And I – who always has to play these military characters – get to play this nomad who comes out of nowhere. She’s sexy and she knows it – I never get to do that. So that was a lot of fun, because we were actually seeing parts of ourselves that people don’t generally cast us for.’

With only two weeks to get in shape before principle photography, O’Brian hit the gym with a trainer (‘My strength training was very film-focused, concentrating on where the camera catches light – so a lot of upper-pectoral muscle, a lot of abs’), threw herself into embodying a warrior in 80s short shorts and shell suits (‘I’m literally wearing one of Jackie’s bras right now, my wife has a jacket – I think I took half the wardrobe’) and watched Glass’ list of reference films, which included Crash, Saturday Night Fever, Showgirls, The Night Porter and A Snake of June.

Stewart collaborated with Glass and costume designer Olga Mill to create a skeevy-sexy look for Lou – all oversized T-shirts, mullet hair and sneakers. ‘We started off thinking that Lou would be in boots and maybe a leather belt,’ Stewart says. ‘I was like, “Lou’s a teenie guy. Lou’s a soft-shoe guy.” You can tell [Mill] the tiniest little things that maybe don’t even have detail, and she’s able to interpret it. And something about her colour choices… It’s so “come in for milk and cookies, but then get face-fucked…”’ she laughs.

Together, the trifecta of Glass, Stewart and O’Brian created a realistic romance with one foot firmly in heightened reality. ‘[Glass is] willing to use her script as a diving board. She was sculpting a feeling, a sort of energy and momentum,’ recalls Stewart. ‘Some directors are like surgeons and some are a little more ephemeral. Rose is definitely able to modulate in real time. You’re not always aware of how that’s going to end up. I just felt like such a partner – anything she needed, I just wanted to hand it to her. I didn’t need to always know what was going on, because I genuinely trusted her implicitly.’

‘IT’S NOT THAT GRAPHIC... IT’S JUST THAT WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT A WOMAN’S BODY, PEOPLE START TO SQUIRM’

KRISTEN STEWART

That trust was implicit in scenes of sex and violence. In one moment, a character is brutalised in a horribly funny way, gore (and teeth) flying – which left Sundance audiences gasping. The same could be said of hot, horny scenes of oral sex, where Lou asks Jackie to show her how she masturbates. ‘I wanted the film to be really pulpy, melodramatic, visceral and there would probably be a lot of sex and violence in it,’ says Glass. ‘But, at the same time, I basically wanted to make the most fun film that I could. It’s all done with a pretty light touch. And the world that the film takes place in, it’s got a foot in reality but it’s definitely got a foot up in the clouds somewhere else. It sort of means that you’re able to lean into the more operatic qualities of gruesome, juicy violence, which in filmmaking is just a lot of fun. Subtlety is not the quality at the forefront of many things in the film.’

WHAM, BAM, THANK YOU, MA’AMS

Though Stewart had been quoted during Sundance saying that the sauce in the movie might shock some, she’s keen to point out that she doesn’t think it’s actually shocking. ‘In print, that looks so different, because I was laughing when I said that. It will shock the pearlclutchers. It’s not that graphic. It’s just that when you talk about a woman’s body, when you start talking about the orifice, people start squirming. [The sex scenes are done] in a really good, tasty way. You don’t see anything. I think you see [O’Brian’s] tits once. You see mine for a split-second. But I think it’s the verbiage. We talk about each other. We actually acknowledge what’s happening, versus burying a head under a bustle.’

The whole experience impressed Stewart, not least working with O’Brian, a relative newbie compared with her own two-decade career. ‘Something Katy brought that wasn’t necessarily in the script was a deep sweetness, and it makes it fucking weird. I was impressed with her gall. Because when I first started, I was a kid. I was malleable. She’s fully formed. She’s a fucking grown-up and that can be so much scarier, to trust it all at that age, when you aren’t used to it. I think she killed it.’ Glass agrees, thrilled with the way the two women crafted a cinematic relationship that wrong-foots audiences and each other. But amid the many takeaways on offer (guilt, trauma, ambition, steroid abuse, daddy issues, breaking bad habits), she’s reluctant to tag what the overriding theme of the piece truly is. ‘I don’t want to put anything into people’s heads. If nothing else, it’s about how difficult it is to quit smoking,’ she smiles.

‘THE WORLD IT TAKES PLACE IN... IT’S GOT A FOOT IN REALITY, BUT IT’S DEFINITELY GOT A FOOT UP IN THE CLOUDS SOMEWHERE ELSE’

ROSE GLASS

For O’Brian, the movie explores the beauty of life glinting in the filth. ‘The film is surrounding us with disgusting situations, and the only thing that really comes in as beautiful is our [characters’] love, or how we’re looking at each other. We’re in this shithole and we’re looking at each other. That’s what’s good about it.’

Stewart sighs as she tries to parse her thoughts. ‘I think it’s about the stories we tell ourselves to get us through. None of them are true and all of them are true – and everyone is having a different experience. The thing that drives it usually is a beating heart. That can lead you to very dangerous and very beautiful and stunning places…’

LOVE LIES BLEEDING OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 3 MAY.