The Hottest Take: Love Lies Bleeding
Expecting an extremely Sapphic thriller, I received more, much more.
This might have spoilers. Let’s see where it goes.
This movie hit me so fucking hard in the deepest places of my being that I apologize-don’t-apologize for this being less of a review and more of a purgation.
1. I suppose I have to go watch everything that Rose Glass has directed, now…. Love Lies Bleeding is an beautifully economical film, with much left unsaid for the audience to chew on.
2. I saw Love Lies Bleeding about four days ago, and it’s taken this long to feel comfortable knowing how to talk about it. At first, I had this powerful urge to say that I can’t imagine why a man or a heterosexual woman would see this film. I don’t know if they CAN see this film. But the truth is, for all of its secrets and turbulent depths, an economical thriller floats atop that ocean. It’s like a train running on two tracks, and that’s one. The other one is a love story that feels like being hit by a train and asking to be hit by it over and over again.1 That’s what’s in the depths.
2a. As to those depths, I can’t relate to you the love story between Lou (Kristen Stewart) and Jackie (Katy O’Brien). You either know or you don’t know. You either feel it or you don’t feel it. You may have had it and lost it and found it again, and you’d do it again and again. I would. I might. So I’ll summarize with Heavens To Betsy’s “Firefly,” from these monsters are real:
2b. If You Know, You Know. Listen to your inmost self. When it tells you what you are and what to do, be it and do it. If you know this movie is for you, then it’s for you, and you should see it, immediately.
3. Here’s where I stop “reviewing” and start spilling…. There’s a moment, early in the film, when Lou, who let’s describe as a dyke, and Jackie, who’s more of a muscle babe than a muscle mommy, are connecting, and Anna Domino’s “Everyday I Don’t” is in the background, and, like an anchor chain descending to the bottom of the ocean, my heart came free of its spool, slipping into a darkroom of memories and bodies, never hitting bottom.
There was a time in my life, a little more than a decade ago, when I was falling dangerously in love and living in a tiny warren over 5000 square feet of workbenches, drill presses, and custom cars. I was also very sick, I was afraid that I was dying, and I listened to either Anna Domino’s East and West or This Mortal Coil’s Blood or Filigree and Shadow every night. I’d put a side on, drop the needle, and it was often Anna’s voice that brought me the peace of sleep. Anna sold me that disc, out of her personal stash, at an in-store where I sat at her feet and gazed up at her like a child.
Sometimes a song is like an geologist’s hammer, it cracks you open and reveals the nebula, a galaxy, a universe, inside. Sometimes it’s easier to see all of yourself when you’re in pieces on the floor.
4. Sometimes a story is like a blacksmith’s hammer, a steady rhythm that shapes the too-hot you into something more real. By the end of Love Lies Bleeding, I had accepted the shape given to me by the hammer - and the anvil. I cried in the darkness, and I remain convinced that the purpose and gift of a film’s credits is a dark place to cry, alone or with someone else. And then I went home, where, for about three hours, I cried, slid in and out of a fugue state, and I had to force myself to carry out every single motion.2 I had to force myself to eat.3
Since Wednesday (It’s Saturday night, now), I’ve slipped in and out of a fugue, and I still don’t know how to verbalize why. Things have been moving so fast. My birthday was on Tuesday. By Wednesday night, sitting cross-legged like a child in a big comfy seat in the dark and watching a love too familiar grow and burst on screen, I was lost in the most powerful realization and affirmation of my gender that I’ve ever had, and on Friday morning, I was fast-tracked to a CT scan for the surgery that will re-carve my skull in my own image in a ritual that can’t happen soon enough, as it’s come decades too late.
Last night I dreamt of the discovery of barely buried bones, human femurs that weren’t. I have this recurring nightmare, where I’m trying to conceal a burial pit, evidence of some grotesque crime or mystery, and know it cannot be concealed, that it’s impossible to conceal such a thing. But, last night, there were no human femurs or bits of spine in the pit. They were just elk bones all along. The terror was all for nothing, but the mystery remains.
Last night, I slept in pieces, like when I was sick and listening to Anna Domino to stay alive, waking and sleeping and waking again, in pain and fear. I’m tired. I’m only half-here right now, leave a message at the beep….
5. For what seems like a month or two, the Queer universe has been baking in the radiation of Kristen Stewart’s absolute realness.4 At the intersection a fistful of steroids, a white jockstrap, and the suggestion that Stewart deserves a little testosterone as a treat, and with shed blood in mind, we’re going to do what we have to do to stay alive.
6. What feelings do we allow ourselves to feel in this life? Who do we allow ourselves to be? Can we hear our own voice when it’s screaming inside? Whose voices do we listen to when we come into being?
I’m reminded of when, during the pandemic, I was a part-time babysitter to a friend’s children. The eldest, who was about ten at the time, loved being picked up and spun around. She would jump off of furniture and I’d catch her and flip her upside down or spin her around. One time, she got a little too excited and barfed a tiny bit in her mask. We sat down, I asked her if she was okay, we took a break, and then she said “Can we do that again?” I said no, not today, but, I get it, kid. I do.
I have temporal lobe epilepsy, so fugue states are kind of, like, a big part of my life. I have spent weeks at a time in a nonverbal state in the past, and the longer I’m in it, the harder it is to come out. Sometimes I’d rather be “there” than “here.”
I love eating, and like Jackie, I lift weights, and eat A LOT of protein, so this is an extraordinary circumstance, very disturbing and yet mildly liberating in the break of my pattern, too.
All love to Katy O’Brien, who, as Jackie, is deep in the role of a lifetime. As one muscle mommy to another, I feel you. I see you, THANK YOU.