Prathyush Parasuraman
A Theory Emerges from the banal, to the brutal, the bizarre, Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, following up on her acclaimed work of body-horror, Saint Maud (2019), works as both a portrait and a provocation.
I do not think it is a contested claim that A24 is writing into existence, conscientiously, one sedimented film after film, its own aesthetic posture — grungy, sexy, witty, verbose, progressive, with a metallic wash.
The film is based in America because as Glass, whose last film bled in a British seaside town, notes in interviews, this is a country where there are signs outside film festival theaters demanding no firearms.
The plot thickens when love begins to be seen as something that needs to keep being proven, keep producing evidence of its stain. On the heart. On other bodies. This turns to madness, foul mouthed tensions, body resizing, and ultimately.
Love Lies Bleeding has all the hallmarks, perhaps fitting, as a string of stings, with no bite. That is, at least, how I saw it, at first, the strangeness of the film becoming its essence, the confected tension becoming its natural language. There is no truth. It is all a demented posture.
Turns tender the film’s phantasms, bringing its stratospheric exaggerations back to firm ground. The pauses in her conversations have to be studied. these swerves of thought, these spaces from which she jumps into the chasm, Love Lies Bleeding blooms its meaty heart.