Love Lies Bleeding, directed by Rose Glass and starring Kristin Stewart and Katy M. O’Brien, is one of the most recent queer films to be released, as of May 2024. The two main characters, Lou and Jackie, meet soon after Jackie arrives in Lou’s small town in New Mexico, where she plans to stay and train in the gym Lou works at for about a month, after which she plans to attend an upcoming bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas. Jackie moves in with Lou and they begin dating, while Jackie simultaneously works at the local gun range owned by Lou’s estranged father. A few weeks after Jackie’s arrival, Lou’s sister, Beth, ends up in the hospital in serious condition after being beaten by her husband, JJ, who also works for Lou and Beth’s father and who is notoriously abusive towards his wife. Upon seeing how devastated Lou is at her sister’s hospitalization, Jackie sneaks into JJ’s house and, strengthened by the steroids Lou has been giving her to train since her arrival, Jackie kills him with her bare hands. When Lou discovers this later that night, she frantically disposes of the body, dumping JJ and his car in a local ravine, which she tells Jackie will “lead to the investigation of someone else,” due to the other incriminating evidence previously disposed of in the ravine. This evidence, it is soon revealed, is connected to Lou’s father’s long standing criminal activity, and with the discovery of the cavern by law enforcement, Lou and Jackie enter a dangerous struggle with Lou’s father as he tries to rebury his crimes and force their participation in the coverup.
In this note on Love Lies Bleeding, we will be considering its position as a “queer road-trip film” through the lenses of various scholarly works we have discussed over the course of this semester, including those pieces by Amy Borden, Annmarie Jagose, and Dijana Jelaca. Before diving into these specific scholarly articles, however, we wish to initially review the road-trip positioning of Glass’s most recent film. There are certainly some easily identifiable “on-the-road” moments throughout the film, including Jackie’s individual journey to Las Vegas for the bodybuilding competition and the open-ended drive at the conclusion of the film, where Lou and Jackie are portrayed as fleeing New Mexico together. However, the larger road-trip arc of the film is less emphasized, and in its positioning, it arguably “queers” the more traditional road-trip film theme. In this, we refer to the fact that the entire movie is a road-trip for Jackie, who has arrived in New Mexico only as part of her journey away from Oklahoma and to Nevada. While we get vague hints about Jackie’s past, we don’t receive any specific details, including the absence of any description of where else Jackie may have stopped between leaving her hometown and arriving in Lou’s. This ever-present but unemphasized “on-the-road” position that Jackie inhabits throughout the whole film offers a different lens through which to perceive a road-trip movie and queers more traditional representations of the sub-genre.
As we begin analyzing Love Lies Bleeding through a more academic and theoretical lens, we would like to begin with considering how it is a “queer” film rather than an “LGBTQ+” one, as characterized by Amy Borden (2016) in her piece “Queer or LGBTQ+: On the Question of Inclusivity in Queer Cinema Studies.” In defining “queer” films, Borden argues that such movies are those which strive for “deviant” representation, prioritize a less traditional cinematic style and narrative, target audiences beyond the mainstream, and advocate for a radical politics. LGBTQ+ films, on the other hand, tend to prioritize a assimilatory representation (i.e. coming out stories, acceptance in the face of homophobia, coming-of-age stories, etc.), follow traditional narrative arcs and plot points, target only mainstream audiences, and conform to a more assimilatory and traditional politics of homonormativity. Love Lies Bleeding embodies these aspects of queer cinema in a variety of ways. It explores lesbian sexuality and desire outside of heteronormative traditions and restraint—for example, Lou puts Jackie’s foot in her mouth at one point while looking at her erotically, while at another time she is shown explicitly instructing Jackie to finger herself while she helps. The film also deviates from the traditional representation tactics of LGBTQ+ movies, which also usually ties in with assimilatory narratives; by this, we mean that while the main characters of the movie are LGBTQ+, the plot does not hinge around their self-acceptance or acceptance by others around their sexuality. Lou explicitly explains at one point that her estrangement from her father has nothing to do with her sexuality, which offers a clear disruption of traditional LGBTQ+ film narratives of homophobic rejection and eventual assimilatory acceptance. Rather than adhering to these mainstream narratives and representations of queer people, Love Lies Bleeding centers queer identity and desire in a fashion that embraces “deviance” and targets audiences beyond the mainstream. Scenes that involve the use of body horror (i.e. Jackie’s continuously growing muscle under the use of steroids), those clips that repeatedly center the (arguably erotic) moments of Lou injecting Jackie with steroids, and the steroid-and-guilt-fueled scene of Jackie vomiting Lou out of her mouth in what appears to be embryonic sac are undeniably subversive and intended for a more niche—and more queer—audience than those of mainstream LGBTQ+ cinema. The overall distortion of traditional portrayals of desire, eroticism, relationships, and general politics creates a radically queer film well-beyond the assimilatory traditions of LGBTQ+ cinema.
ِِAdditionally, Love Lies Bleeding exemplifies some of the complex queer inter-community dynamics that we have explored in the course, especially regarding the inherent deadlock of ideas on the delineation of the lesbian identity that was analyzed by Annamarie Jagose in Lesbian Utopics. The ill-defined nature of Jackie’s queerness plays a pivotal role in her relationship with Lou throughout the film, beginning with their first kiss when Lou pauses to ask, “You’re not like some fucking straight girl, right?” It’s clear that there are a few elements of Jackie’s presentation and relationships with other characters which make her appear less obviously queer than someone like Lou, who one of the men from the gym refers to as a “grade A dyke”. Still, the returning speculation around the legitimacy of Jackie’s queerness is remarkable, considering the fact that she was the one who initiated intimacy with Lou, as well as the way her use of steroids to become more muscular transgresses traditional femininity. Regardless, the discovery that Jackie also slept with men was enough to cause Lou to have an outburst in which she accused Jackie of lying to her about her identity. The tension between the two main character’s conceptions of queerness in the film reflects what’s at stake in the debate between universalizing and minoritizing views of lesbianism. As we discussed in class, restricting the delineation of sexual identities around a concrete set of behaviors becomes problematic especially when we consider the potential harm it can bring through excluding intersectionally marginalized individuals. Being that a central element to the queer road trip in Love Lies Bleeding is Jackie’s hitchhiking prior to meeting Lou, living transiently could have at times necessitated her intimacy with men, such as her sleeping with JJ to get a job. Considering how the landscape of these character’s circumstances, expressions of gender, and sexual behaviors can all be utilized when analyzing queer identity in Love Lies Bleeding, Jagose’s examination of the debate between universalizing and minoritizing views of lesbianism speaks to the significance of these concepts beyond theory, as well as the liberatory potential of queerness for marginalized individuals who don’t easily fit into more restrictive conceptions of gender or sexual identities.
As analyzed in previous paragraphs, Love Lies Bleeding challenges the stereotypes that criterions the queer film. It emphasizes the visual and auditory textures, which contribute to a sensory experience accompanied by the narrative exposition. The film’s setting is around the 1980s, and it uses modern cinematic techniques, which deviate from the audience’s expectation of the historical feeling of that period. Dijana Jelaca’s essay on film feminism, post-cinema, and the affective turn provides several insights that can be expanded into the analysis of this film. Regarding post-cinema, Jelaca illustrates how modern digitals have transformed the traditional notion of womanhood by incorporating visual techniques, unconventional film editing, etc. Near the end of the film, when Lou struggles with his father during the fight, Jackie comes to help in an abnormal shape and controls Lou’s father by holding his arms. Then, in the end, Lou also transforms into a huge shape, and they run together, surrounded by the cloud. The large body shapes are very unexpected and challenge the traditional social norm expectation of females, with an indication of strength and power endowed on women. Another term mentioned by Jelaca is the affective turn, which emphasizes the feeling of engagement and body sensations when people watch the film. In Love Lies Bleeding, there are tons of violent scenes excess. After Jackie killed JJ, Lou went to JJ’s house to clean and pack the body. The camera focuses on JJ’s face from the top view, which is the view from Lou. The exposure to the dead body with a broken bleeding head is a very deeply engaging scene with an excess of blood, death, etc. This narrative is different from the traditional way in terms of straightforward visualization. There is also some shock when exposing the dead body, corresponding to the affect theory’s physical response. Other than this, there are a lot of scenes with excess exposure to bleeding, gunshots, and steroid use. The excess in the film can provoke a body response, emphasizing how the media affects the body and cognition through direct engagement. The essay also demonstrates the gender construction and deconstruction when talking about the two musical videos (Telephone and Bitch Better Have My Money). The excess challenges traditional and well-defined womanhood and opens new possibilities for exploration. Refer back to the paper, “The identities are decomposed and recomposed continuously.” The depiction of Jackie and Lou shares some similarities with the two musical videos mentioned in the paper, which breaks the binary gender traditions and redefines gender identity in an undefined way. This can be related to the indeterminate nature of the queer community. Overall, the visualization, the excess exposure to violence, and the breakdown of gender identity with modern technologies challenge the heteronormative definition of womanhood and feminism.
Violence is a recurring theme throughout Love Lies Bleeding and the film’s portrayal of violence serves to subvert traditional narratives of queer individuals as victims of tragedy. Similar to Gregg Araki’s exploration of violence in The Living End, the film uses acts of aggression to resist societal norms and challenge the perception of queer characters as passive or defeated by their circumstances. As Robert Mills describes in his analysis of The Living End, the characters’ violent actions become a means of reconstituting power hierarchies and asserting agency in the face of social marginalization. Mills highlights Araki’s use of violence to present characters who defy moralistic conduct promoted in dominant media. He notes that “a violent act marks the site at which The Living End announces its distance from a cinema of social compliance; what Araki presents to us is a cinema of social resistance” (Mills 314). Similarly, in Love Lies Bleeding violence serves as a tool for challenging societal norms and presenting queer characters as agents of their own narratives.
Moreover, the violence depicted in Love Lies Bleeding not only pushes back against social compliance but also presents queer characters as full characters with complex inner lives. Mills discusses how violence in The Living End compels viewers to consider marginalized individuals as “diverse, fully realized beings,” (Mills 318). Similarly, the violence in Love Lies Bleeding invites audiences to engage with the struggles and motivations of the protagonists, by showcasing them in situations traditionally reserved for cishet characters, without detracting from the film’s acknowledgement of the characters’ queer identities. Additionally, the film’s focus on crime and drama unrelated to the characters’ queerness further queers the narrative by portraying them as multifaceted individuals who can participate in narratives not solely defined by their sexual orientation. Mills’s analysis of The Living End suggests that violence allows the film to stage a psychological infiltration between the bodies of the spectator and those of the characters, inviting audiences to empathize with their struggles and motivations. Where queer narratives have often been constricted to focusing on the characters’ journeys and struggles with queerness, Love Lies Bleeding shows that queer experiences are not limited to their identities.
Overall, Love Lies Bleeding challenges conventional narratives of queerness through its portrayal of violence and crime while raising important questions about the representation of queer relationships and the potential impact of recurring tropes within the genre. By critically examining the role of violence in shaping queer narratives, the film invites audiences to engage with complex and nuanced portrayals of LGBTQ+ experiences while interrogating the broader social contexts in which they are situated.
Works Cited
- Borden, Amy. “Queer or LGBTQ+: On the Question of Inclusivity in Queer Cinema Studies.” The Routledge Companion to Cinema & Gender, edited by Kristin Hole et al., 0 ed., Routledge, 2016. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315684062.
- Love Lies Bleeding. Directed by Rose Glass, A24, 2024.
- Jagose, Annamarie. Lesbian Utopics. New York, Routledge, 1994.
- Jelaca, Dijana. “Film Feminism, Post-Cinema, and the Affective Turn.” The Routledge Companion to Cinema & Gender, Routledge, London, 2016, pp. 446–457.
- Mills, Robert. “Violent bodies and victim narratives: On the cinematic Activism of Gregg Araki’s The Living End.” Critical Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 3, 2008, pp. 313-320.
- Gregg Araki. The Living End. Directed by Gregg Araki. 1992. Strand Releasing.
Wong Kar-wai. Happy Together. Directed by Wong Kar-wai. 1997. Block 2 Pictures.
Analysis by Lexi, Mel, Viviana, and Xiyue
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