Watching Kristen Stewart is always an adventure. Her acting chops that make good movies better and boring ones bearable, she has an angst about her that has made her one of the most exciting attractions in her American filmography. She has a gift for making her characters' inner lives transparently readable. She may be subtle and restrained, but it's her captivating and unsettling presence that draws you in, a tickling intensity that can put her (and you) on edge. Pauline Kael wrote that Jane Fonda's “motor runs a little fast.” The same goes for Stewart.
In her latest vehicle, “Love Lies Bleeding,” Stewart plays Lou, a violent and winkingly obnoxious neo-noir of stature. Lewis is a small-town loner somewhere in New Mexico who longs to escape a classic dead-end street. If this were a 1940s noir, Lou would be fixing his car in a dingy garage while waiting for the lady who will change his fate to come in. That's pretty much what happens here, except it's the 80s and Lou is the woman who works at the gym. She's struggling to unclog a toilet and pouring steroids into a large juicer. Then, like sirens sometimes do in movies, a beautiful stranger walks into the gym and changes her life.
The stranger, Jackie (nice and physically impressive Katy O. Brian), immediately catches Lou's eye. It's doomy, Old Hollywood style, and it brightens the film and creates a sense of fire. What happens is hot and delicious, but a romance like this needs something to get in the way, be it a loot bag, a jealous ex, or just plain contrivance. The film features violence, lots of guns, creepy flashbacks, and a classic villain, played by the fantastic Ed Harris, complete with a sneer and an epically hideous wig. “Love Lies Bleeding” has a lot of extravagant and ridiculous hair, along with equally rotten teeth and souls.
I suspect director Rose Glass (“Saint Maud”) has read James M. Cain’s work or seen some of the movies made from his hard-boiled books. She might have skimmed through a few of Jim Thompson's novels. (Glass wrote the script with Weronika Tofilska.) “Love Lies Bleeding” is not on par with Cain or Thompson, and it would be foolish to make too many comparisons. Still, Lou's world-changing impact when Jackie first walks into the gym recalls the moment the drifter in “The Postman Always Rings Twice” meets his kismet. Her lips were sticking out so I wanted to crush her lips for her.”