‘Love Lies Bleeding’ premiere leaves Sundance crowd cheering and squirming
Kristen Stewart falls for a bodybuilder in “Love Lies Bleeding,” an electric and violent romance thriller that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
Kristen Stewart falls for a bodybuilder in “Love Lies Bleeding,” an electric (and violent) romance thriller that premiered — and lived up to its name — on Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival.
Audience members at the Eccles Theater cheered for several triumphant character moments, laughed at the dark humor and squirmed in their seats during the many ultra-gory scenes. The movie, written and directed by Rose Glass (“Saint Maud”), follows Stewart as Lou, a reclusive gym manager who falls hard for an ambitious bodybuilder named Jackie (Katy O’Brian). Their love leads to violence as they get pulled into the web of Lou’s criminal family (Ed Harris, Dave Franco and Jena Malone play her kin.)
“It is a violent film,” Glass told the crowd during a post-screening Q&A. “Violence can be great fun in films. We had amazing VFX and stunt coordinators, and the sound design was genius. Every department, you just have to try to push it to the max.”
Perhaps the most memorable moment of the chat was when Franco, who plays Stewart’s shady and destructive brother-in-law, whom he described as “the biggest f---ing a--hole of all time,” talked about how he and Glass tried to figure out his character’s backstory and motivation — even though it didn’t end up on screen.
“We talked about, ‘Yes, this guy is terrible. But why is he like that? What happened in his childhood? He probably experienced his own violence’…” — at which point Stewart interrupted him and grabbed the mic to jokingly say, “Shut the f--- up!” The theater erupted in laughter, but Stewart encouraged him to keep talking about his process after the ad-lib.
Rating: 5