March Movies Part 3: All of Us Strangers & Love Lies Bleeding

To close out March, I watched two very different queer movies. One is a gory, funny, and surreal thriller, the other is an introspective, melancholy romance. But both are incredibly compelling and well worth a watch. 

Love Lies Bleeding: Directed by Rose Glass, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Weronika Tofilska, this movie is set in 1989 and stars Kristen Stewart as Lou, a loner who runs a gym in the middle of nowhere. When a ripped woman named Jackie (Katy O'Brian) shows up at her gym, sparks fly. Jackie is hitchhiking her way to Las Vegas for a bodybuilding competition that will take place in a month's time. Lou has access to steroids (managing a gym seems to have its perks) so she suggests Jackie take some to augment her already fantastically muscle-bound figure. This...will have consequences.

I won't go into too many specifics because this is a short movie and you need to let the thrills and action unfold for itself. Suffice to say, it starts out as a sexy romance, and then quickly turns into a murderous thriller as our two heroines get involved in a bit of righteous vengeance against abusive men and then have to cover up their tracks. Ed Harris and Dave Franco deliver some menacing turns and let's just say the wig department on this movie was having a grand ol' time with all the mullets required. 

This movie is bizarre and twisted and great. When emotions are extremely heightened and every surface is splattered in blood, it still takes the time to let each scene breathe and insert plenty of wry, hilarious dialogue. Stewart and O'Brien deliver insanely good performances and even when this movie takes some artistic license and gets a bit surreal, these two actors keep everything grounded yet magical. I've never seen a movie quite like this, and again, this is why we need more women writing and directing movies. Because this is the kind of weird and imaginative brilliance they come up with.

All of Us Strangers: Written and directed by Andrew Haigh, and based on the Japanese novel, Strangers, by Taichi Yamada, this is a devastatingly gorgeous movie about one lonely man who experienced a lot of grief early in life and is still dealing with the fallout. Andrew Scott stars as Adam, a man who lives in a newly-built apartment building. He's one of the first people to move in, so he lives a very solitary existence, until one day, a neighbor named Harry (Paul Mescal) shows up outside his door with a bottle of whiskey. Adam rebuffs that initial advance, but later decides that maybe he does need some companionship and reaches out. The two quickly strike up a sweet romance.

In the meantime, however, Adam is reconnecting with his dead parents. Yeah, I don't know quite how else to put it. Essentially, he keeps going back to his old childhood home, and then has a dream/hallucination that he is visiting with his parents, who tragically died in a car crash when he was twelve. In these visits, he can finally catch up with them, tell them about what he has been doing with his life, and even come out as gay, a fact that both parents react to in very different ways. Jamie Bell and Claire Foy play Adam's parents, and they are spectacular, but Scott is the star in these encounters, reverting to a little boy who misses his parents so much and is so desperate to seek their comfort and reassurance.

Of course, Adam's worlds must collide. The movie so beautifully captures this man's metamorphosis as he finds more love and acceptance in his life, but trying to introduce his boyfriend to his dead parents is naturally going to be a big ask, and things unfold in very dramatic fashion. This is a movie that hits you squarely in the feels - every scene is directed with such evocative grace and some of the transitions are stunning pieces of cinematography. It is beautifully acted and while the story is fantastical, it is so resonant and personal and universal. It may be the very specific story of one gay man in London, but it also feels like the story of all of our collective childhoods, out little heartaches and challenges with our parents, our struggles to grow up and find a partner, and the ultimate joy and pain of being alive. It is simply stunning.