It would seem lesbianism is “in the air” of late. At least in mainstream pop culture—something that hasn’t happened much since the days of t.A.T.u. and Madonna kissing Britney and Christina at the VMAs. Oh yeah, and then there were a few blips in the movie world with offerings such as Carol, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Disobedience, Blue Is the Warmest Color and The Handmaiden (though most of these likely weren’t seen outside of an “arthouse cinema” audience), plus some play on “TV” with Orange Is the New Black. But, by and large, it’s been a gay man’s world when it comes to the Midwest and the South—a.k.a. the benchmarks for pop culture fully saturating the mainstream—embracing “homo things” (namely, Drag Race…and, more recently, perhaps even Challengers). But lesbians are “chic” again if we’re to go by Love Lies Bleeding, Drive-Away Dolls and Billie Eilish announcing, “I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand—until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina.” That’s certainly one way to announce a sexual preference.
With Rose Glass’ second feature (following Saint Maud) in particular, the pivot back to the “divine lesbian” in pop culture is complete. Of course, Kristen Stewart, who stars as “reclusive gym manager” Lou (short for Louise), has long been open about her own bisexuality (and, currently, she is engaged to a woman—Dylan Meyer). One might say the first and second half of her famous life has been bifurcated, in fact: in the first half, dating men and, in the second, dating women. Thus, she was fully prepared to inhabit a character like Lou, who sets her sights on Jackie (Katy O’Brian, who looks like a cross between Alia Shawkat and Ilana Glazer), an aspiring bodybuilder that shows up in her gym. A gym called “Crater” (which sounds very close to “cooter” if you think about it). Where, in true 80s fashion, “motivational” signs populate the room with sayings like, “No Pain No Gain,” “Pain Is Weakness Leaving The Body” and “Only Losers Quit.” It’s all very in keeping with the capitalist/baby boomer philosophy of life, despite the fact that baby boomers experienced their youth at the height of a time in America when things actually were easier (in terms of achieving “success”) because there were fewer regulations/red tape-related hurdles and far less surveillance.
Lou herself is the “beneficiary” of “good fortune” in that her psychotic father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris, in his creepiest role to date), owns the gym, hence Lou’s position as its manager. Of course, a role in management is hardly all glitz and glamor, as we see when Lou unclogs a disgusting toilet (that tends to be perennially clogged) in the bathroom. Worse still, she has to do it while Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), a woman who is clearly obsessed with her (and likely the only other lesbian in town), hovers over her and tries to get her to come out for a drink. Lou “politely” declines. From there, Glass gives us the “Miss Congeniality treatment” in terms of showing how Lou is a lonely single woman, returning home to her apartment to have a beer, make a microwave meal for one and feed her cat…all of which are things that we see Grace Hart (Sandra Bullock) do at the beginning of Miss Congeniality (to be sure, Grace was giving off major “dyke energy” for the 2000s). Except, in the depiction of Lou’s lonely existence, we get to see her masturbate on her couch, too.
As for Jackie’s life of loneliness, it’s slightly less noticeable because her primary focus is on basic survival. And yes, that includes fucking randos in exchange for things like job leads. Only the “rando” in question is actually Lou’s shithead, wife-beating brother-in-law, J.J. (Dave Franco, who probably shouldn’t embrace such parts considering who his brother is). Of course, Jackie doesn’t know that at the time, nor does she meet Lou until the following day after accepting a job as a waitress at a restaurant on a gun range (a sentence that you could only say in America)—unfortunately, also owned by Lou’s father. Her life of transiency has, needless to say, made her very resourceful and very impervious to fucked-up situations. Like sleeping on the street. Indeed, it is while she brushes her teeth after having slept outside for the night that she’s placed in the foreground of a looming billboard that reads, “Follow Your Dream.” Another satirical mise-en-scène from Glass, who clearly sees the irony of the U.S. being a place where people are told that “anyone” can succeed, even though the fine print to that false advertising makes it so that only certain kinds of people can. And people like Lou and Jackie (*cough cough* “freaks and weirdos” a.k.a. the non-herteronormative) aren’t generally among them.
And so, when these two women’s paths cross, it is as though each sees the same wound in the other. The same type of rejection, the same feeling of worthlessness. In fact, Jackie’s amazed when Lou doesn’t automatically mock her plan to go to Las Vegas and compete in a bodybuilding competition. So “supportive” is Lou of Jackie’s dream that she even gives her some steroids to try for the first time. Despite Jackie telling Lou she’s “all naturale, baby,” she can’t resist getting “poked” by Lou when offered (especially after being told that Lou will give her “the stuff” for free). The poking quickly leads to sucking and, soon enough, Jackie has found herself a place to stay in Lou’s abode (the term “U-Haul lesbian” definitely comes to mind) at the “Mi Casa Apartments” (which appears to only house one apartment, and it’s Lou’s). Not to mention a steady supplier of steroids, her newfound addiction. So really, Lou can’t blame Jackie when she starts to “hulk out” (in truth, O’Brian would have been a better casting choice for She-Hulk) and lose all self-regulating control of her emotions—for she was the one who technically “made” Jackie this way by introducing her to the substance.
It is after becoming hopped up on the steroids that Jackie bears witness to Lou’s pain over having to stand by helplessly in the hospital room where her sister, Beth (Jena Malone), lies unconscious thanks to another beating from J.J. And in this moment of “clarity,” the steroids kick in to tell her exactly what to do to make Lou’s pain disappear: kill that fucker. Ah, the things one must do for love.
Alas, things get pretty raw for Jackie during the comedown, after she realizes the full weight of what she’s done. And when Lou finds her sitting in the bathtub of J.J. and Beth’s house (after happening to see her car, which she lent to Jackie, parked outside of it), it’s obvious there’s some remorse on her part…even if Jackie insists, “I made it right” and both of them are fundamentally glad that the world has been cleansed of a man like J.J.
If the two weren’t bonded before by their love, ostracism and general contempt for the “normies,” they certainly are after disposing of J.J.’s body together. Lou even feels comfortable enough to take Jackie to her dad’s “secret spot.” The same place the film opens on, wielding the shot so that it amounts to what looks like a “gash” (sexual indeed), a crevice, a “long opening.” It’s the place, viewers find out, where Lou’s father kills and disposes of all the people who get in his way.
As the tension and “thriller-y” nature of Love Lies Bleeding intensifies (there are many instances when the film smacks of something out of the Nicolas Winding Refn canon) in the wake of J.J.’s murder, Lou and Jackie’s love is put to the test (a lyric, incidentally, that shows up in a major song from 1989 [the year Love Lies Bleeding takes place]: “Express Yourself”). In ways that most “ordinary” couples would never have to endure. So it is that Jackie ends up spouting some tortured pretty phrases (sorry, Taylor, you ain’t the only “tortured poet”), like, “Don’t ever fall in love, okay?” and “I wish I’d never met you!” Except that, without Lou, Jackie knows she’d be far more miserable. Such is the “curse” of being in love (or, as Britney Spears once phrased it, “Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em”).
Glass’ decision to set the narrative in 1989 seems to stem not only from female bodybuilding and gym membership-based fitness in general becoming more of “a thing” at that time, but also to punctuate the utter seediness of the so-called American dream as it continued to decay in the Reagan era. A “dream” rendered even more incongruous and insidious in Love Lies Bleeding because, in the background of the narrative, there are reports not only of the crack epidemic, but also of the Berlin Wall’s dismantlement, with more and more East Germans being funneled into the West (and its pro-capitalist lifestyle) so that they can be “liberated.” And yet, two women who simply like eating pussy aren’t even really “free” to do that (not without much ridicule and judgment anyway) in the “Land of the Free.” Or, as Lena Katina of t.A.T.u. once said (despite ultimately revealing that she and bandmate Julia Volkova were not actually lesbians), “We wanted people to understand them and not judge them. That they are as free as anyone else.”
But no, not really…and not in Love Lies Bleeding. Instead, they have to be on the run like a lesbian Thelma and Louise. Granted, committing murder doesn’t quite help one’s cause in terms of feeling “unshackled.” It does, in this case though, prove just how much someone really loves you if they’re willing to look past your occasional murderous tendencies as spurred by ‘roid rage.
