Love Lies Bleeding review – Kristen Stewart keeps it real in deliciously lurid outlaw romance

I don’t mean her looks, although as Lou, the manager of a bodybuilding gym in an insalubrious New Mexico backwater, Stewart’s natural magnetism is somewhat muted behind a whey powder pallor, an air of defeated weariness and hair that looks as if it’s been deep-fried rather than washed.

Blowing into Lou’s grim home town, more a collection of strip malls and casual violence than a functioning community, Jackie decides to hole up for a while and earn some money while she prepares for a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas.

The relationship that ignites between them is sweaty, grubby and scorching hot, but as the steroids do their work, warping and distorting Jackie’s body and her mind, a savage, self-destructive, simmering violence creeps into their romance.

Concern for Beth’s safety is why Lou can’t bring herself to leave this spiteful small town, despite numerous reasons to do so (first of these being her gun-toting estranged father, played with reptilian menace by Ed Harris).

They also serve as a kind of twisted mirror image of Lou and Jackie’s amour fou and a cautionary warning that any relationship this thoroughly soaked in blood can’t, ultimately, end well, however invincible the partnership and the passion that drives it might seem at the time.

With the lip-smacking relish that she brings to the body-horror elements of the picture, and the sickening, sinewy crunches in the sound design, Glass ranks alongside the French director of Titane, Julia Ducournau, as one of the most exciting film-makers working in genre cinema.