Love Lies Bleeding

Every artist reveals their inspirations at one point or another. Coldplay was Baby's First Radiohead until they morphed into soccer mom alt-rock balladeers. Many of Christian Slater's first movies were plagued by an aura of trying to be junior Jack Nicholson, until he found his own groove. It's fine for an artist to wear their inspirations on their sleeve. It takes time to find one's voice, and imitation is often the first steps toward it. The hazard of not finding your voice is becoming Brian De Palma or Quentin Tarantino; someone who shamelessly copies style without understanding the substance beneath, but hides behind it by calling it an "homage". Yeah, I said that, and I mean it. Love Lies Bleeding is only director/writer Rose Glass' second feature length film, so I can't get on her for not showing evolution in her direction yet. But I'd be lying if I didn't point out the fact that Love Lies Bleeding takes clear inspiration from sources and does nothing more with them. The story of a bodybuilder and a gym manager who fall in love and fall into a web of crime and murder, LLB owes a life debt to movies from the Coen brothers and Tarantino. Movies like Fargo, True Romance, Kalifornia, and probably a dozen more are stamped all over this pulpy, trashy, crime thriller. That's not a bad thing in and of itself. Those movies are successful and enjoyed to this day because they're good, and LLB slides right in among them, with its story of two women who are probably too toxic to be together but are too dangerous if left alone. Kristen Stewart, who I've only seen as a child actor in Panic Room before this, really impressed me. She really shows here (and I know she's certainly shown it prior to now, but this is my first exposure) that all the flack she got from her dead-eyed, expressionless acting in the Twilight movies was the fault of direction and material, not her. Katy O'Brian is equally enjoyable as her doomed lover and partner in crime. Really, the whole cast -- including Jena Malone, Ed Harris, and Dave Franco -- are excellent. And the movie is always engaging, even as the third act gets a little convoluted for its own good. But LLB's biggest problem is that it never moves does anything original with its inspirations. It's all well and good to tell a gritty crime noir and have it be queer-positive, but the script itself is little more than "what if Fargo was drenched in malt liquor and smelled like Pall Malls". I'm not mad per se, it does what it does well enough, but I can't help feeling like it could've been more, and it was satisfied with the little groove that had been carved out for it by other movies. It's like how, after The Hand That Rocks The Cradle came out in the early 90's, theaters were flooded with copycat movies about someone who should be safe but was really crazy, like The Temp (secretary from Hell), Pacific Heights (tenant from Hell), and Unlawful Entry (cop from Hell). Love Lies Bleeding is like one of those copycat movies. There hasn't been a rash of these, so I'm not saying it's cashing in on a trend. But its slavish adherence to the formula reduces LLB to little more than the formula. I was entertained while watching it, but the movies LLB is inspired by will stick with me a lot longer than LLB will.