A bloody, bulging triumph, Love Lies Bleeding is the first great queer film of 2024

Queeries is a column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

Toward the end of post-production on her brilliantly unsettling debut feature Saint Maud, filmmaker Rose Glass started to think about what she might want to do next. The first thing she decided was that she did not want to write her next film alone (as she had with Maud), so she approached her good friend Weronika Tofilska with an idea.

"I came to her with just a very basic nugget of a thing, which was, as a starting point, something about a female bodybuilder who's training for her first big competition and has a physical and mental unraveling of some kind as she's preparing for it," Glass says. "Coming off the back of Saint Maud, I felt like, energy- and tone-wise, I wanted to have a go at doing something sweaty and violent and bombastic. Something a bit thriller-y."

Tofilska was down to collaborate on some thrills, and the two of them essentially locked themselves in a room for a few months to hash things out.

"I think quite quickly we decided it would be fun to make the bodybuilder fall in love, and for that to be the ultimate thing that derails her," Glass says. "We liked the idea of exploring the kind of romance where it's not a 'love conquers all, heals everything and brings out the best in people' kinda thing, but a slightly more toxic, codependent relationship. The intensity of that seemed intriguing to us."

The result of Glass and Tofilska's efforts would ultimately become Love Lies Bleeding, a film that certainly offers up intensity  — among many other things — in its wild, pulsing ride through the romance between bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O'Brian) and gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart). After the pair meet not-so-cute at Lou's gym, they end up on a somewhat well-intentioned killing spree that's complicated by Lou's terrifying crime boss father (Ed Harris). Defying any singular genre (though thriller is certainly part of the mix), the film is uncompromising in its bloody, bulging vision, giving 2024 its first great piece of queer cinema in the process.

"I feel like there's a way that some people want women — particularly, queer women maybe — to behave in films," Glass says. "A sort of righteousness or morality kind of thing, like, 'We're better because, inherently, we're kind of magical, noble women and men are terrible.'  It wasn't a super conscious mission statement thing, but I think in hindsight that if we were pushing against anything, it was that."

Glass says with a smile that if Love Lies Bleeding has anything to say about queer women, it's that "we can be awful people as well."

"But awful people can still be sympathetic and have good reasons," she says. "Anybody who does shitty things probably convinces themselves they've got a pretty good reason for doing it. And I think that's some of the most fun stuff to kind of explore in films … getting people to sympathize and understand people just before they do something awful."

It makes it all the more easy to want to root for these two women as they do very bad things when they're played by Stewart and O'Brian. Obviously that's no surprise when it comes to Stewart, who is a force of nature in everything she does — though that's especially true here. But O'Brian, in her first lead role in a feature film,  is quite the discovery.

"She's phenomenal," Glass says of O'Brian, who was cast after a rather epic quest to find the right Jackie. From the beginning, Glass wanted to find someone who, physically, could convincingly portray a bodybuilder, rather than offering the role to "another really famous actress," she says.

 "We saw a lot of really cool performers. But it's obviously just such a big acting role as well. She's coming up against Kristen in a lot of scenes and her character goes on a huge journey. I naively thought it would be easy to find a bodybuilder who is also an amazing actor, but it turned out it was quite difficult."

Glass auditioned "loads" of amazing potential Jackies, including wrestlers, bodybuilders, weightlifters and "all these kinds of sportswomen who hadn't acted much before." And then, less than a month before they started shooting, she found O'Brian.

"She sent in a PowerPoint presentation to the casting people being like, 'I need to play this role! I'm a queer bodybuilder from the Midwest; I was born to do this,'" Glass says. "But I think what really clinched it is that she has this amazing physicality. She can nail the whole kind of intimidating action hero presence effortlessly. But scratch just underneath that, and as a performer, there's a real softness and vulnerability and sweetness to her, which was what I really wanted Jackie to have. Even though she does all these terrible things in the film, she's also the film's main kind of innocence."

As for Stewart, no PowerPoint presentation was necessary.

"Once we cast Kristen, inevitably everything sped up and doors started opening faster," Glass says. "I think her coming on board really made it happen, basically. So I'll be forever grateful."

Glass met Stewart just as Spencer was coming out — the film that would earn Stewart her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Princess Diana.

"She could do whatever the f--k she wants after that film," Glass says, "and she chooses to do this. She was like, 'OK, I've been in girl princess mode for too long.' And it felt like she really enjoyed playing the role, which was really enjoyable for me as well. She was just really up for anything and just really unpretentious and very part of the team."

Glass says she's incredibly thankful for the way Stewart, O'Brian and the rest of the cast, which also includes Dave Franco and Jena Malone, were all so down to go on this adventure with her.

"You know, I've only made one film," Glass says. "I'm sure there were moments when they were kind of like, 'What are we doing? Does this girl know what she's doing?' We didn't have much time prepping together, and it's a kind of ridiculous script. They're doing all this silly stuff in these stupid hairdos, and I just felt very grateful for the trust that they were putting in me."

Love Lies Bleeding opens in Canadian cinemas Friday, March 15th.