“I want to do the gayest thing you’ve ever seen” is how Kristen Stewart threw the gauntlet for this movie, and so much of the momentum for Wife and I to see this movie together came from this saucy challenge from one of the premier queer performers of our age. Stephen Colbert commented on the fact that studio execs told him that showing the Vanity Fair cover of Kristen Stewart in the movie would turn off viewers, and he showed it anyway.
Stewart in general has spent the last few weeks talking about the pushback she’s got from studios about the way she dresses and behaves as a queer person in movies (looking at you Happiest Season), and her adamant promise that this movie has allowed for her full creative freedom felt intriguing.
Little did we expect that Love Lies Bleeding would not, in fact, be a steamy gym romance, but, a torrid little genre bender of a film, replete with MURDER and sex scenes worthy of Slate writing an entire article ranking the best of them, and Ed Harris eating fucking bugs. (For the record there aren’t any sex scenes that are really that steamy (!). Probably the hottest scenes are watching Kady O’Brian (of Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania fame(?)) work out while eye fucking Stewart from across the gym. Most of the sex is soured by some serious body horror, which actually leads me to refer you back to Drive Away Dolls for body horror-free lesbian sex scenes within one month of this movie’s release.
I maintain that this movie is A24’s attempt at tricking lesbians into watching an action/horror genre bender in the same way that Sting was Shudder’s attempt to trick creature feature fans into watching a wholesome family drama about a step father just trying his damn best.
Things that worked really well in terms of spoilers are things like: the way that the story preserves the ambiguity of things like why the mom “left” or whether Jackie is just using Lou (Stewart) or not. Jackie’s final act phone call is a focalized way of seeing how her feelings seem genuine, but we have to wait for that payoff. The reveal for Jenna Malone’s character comes as such a shocker, just as the the real reason why Lou can’t or hasn’t left the town where she grew up will really knock you out.
Ed Harris eating bugs is two Babadooks.
