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9 months ago
56 ARTICLE AD
In great times of despair, come great surprises.
That’s what happened in early 2022 as the specialty box office was looking to regain its footing after the Omicron variant: Just when we thought all was lost, A24 showed up with a rare gem, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and provided arthouses some much-needed heat. The movie grossed $77M stateside, the best ever for A24.
In the wake of two strikes leaving their brutal marks on the box office, arthouses could use a savior again.
And that could be with A24’s steroid- filled lesbian love crime spree action thriller, Love Lies Bleeding from filmmaker Rose Glass. The movie hits theaters in limited release on March 8 and goes wide on March 15. If anything, A24 knows how to harness cool and expand an audience for it. In fact, many moviegoers are mere fans of the brand alone (ala HBO and viewers) and arrive to the theater without knowing much about a movie; if it’s A24, they trust and know it will be a fun, twisty ride.
Love Lies Bleeding stars Kristen Stewart as a manager, Lou, who falls for an amateur competitive bodybuilder, Jackie, played by The Mandalorian‘s Katy O’Brian. Jackie works for Lou’s gun-smuggling dad (Ed Harris). However, everything goes sideways when Jackie takes revenge on the husband of Lou’s sister (played by Dave Franco) who has severely beaten his wife (Jena Malone). Love Lies Bleeding never let goes; in fact, it’s like Speed on acid. The pic in turning the crime genre movie inside out was a like a shot of Redbull to a sleepy Sundance, receiving a rapturous response at its Eccles Theatre world premiere. Coming away from Sundance and a recent play at Berlin, Love Lies Bleeding stands at 91% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with critics.
Deadline film critic Valerie Complex exclaimed in her review that Glass, “takes a snapshot of America. Saturated with guns, marked by bloodshed and characterized by lawlessness. However, when you add in some sexy, campy queers sprinkled in for razzle dazzle, you get a film like this full of thrills and captivating energy.”
On tonight’s Crew Call, we caught up with Glass, who not only directed but co-wrote the movie with her collaborator Weronika Tofilska. Glass says that the pic’s pacing stemmed from her “having a short attention span and not wanting people to be bored.”
“It’s kind of about excess and ambition on some levels and it just needed to feel propulsive and energetic,” said Glass.
We speak with Glass about how she broke story, intentionally setting the movie in the 1980s (she admits she was ‘trying to make her characters’ lives difficult’) finding O’Brian, and bringing the project to fruition with Film4.
You can listen to our chat with Glass below:
