One of the most purely entertaining viewing experiences at Sundance Film Festival this year was Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding, which is quite a level up in terms of ideas from her debut Saint Maud. Starring Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco, and Ed Harris, the lesbian bodybuilding neo-noir now has a new trailer from A24 ahead of a March 8 release.
Here’s the synopsis: “From Director Rose Glass comes an electric new love story; reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.”
Jake Kring-Schreifels said in his Sundance review, “Near the end of Love Lies Bleeding, someone eats a large black beetle. It happens in a moment of abrupt anger, and it’s bitten into so forcefully that it’s as if they’d done this before––either relieving a shard of stress or intimidating someone. The movie wouldn’t suffer without it, but its inclusion, even for just a few seconds, is one of those added details that locks in everything you’ve seen and understood: the cruel violence, the surrealist transformations, the rage that infects people with the desire to destroy other living things. This is a Rose Glass movie, which means it packs a killer, multi-faceted punch and resists easy classification. Her second feature after St. Maud is a stylized neo-noir love story, a drama about addiction, an athletic underdog tale, and a bloody thriller compounding genres and narratives that overlap and blend into each other without any wrinkles.”
See the new trailer below.
Love Lies Bleeding opens on March 8.