Love Lies Bleeding, Co-Starring Ed Harris

1989 was a great year for most Americans. The Berlin Wall came down, we had a president we could respect, and the movies were consistently entertaining. However, Lou is going through some tough times, largely because of her beyond dysfunctional family and its criminal activities. She finally meets someone she really likes, but the stranger has plenty of her own baggage in Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

In 1989, the steroid scandals had yet to rock cycling and MLB. Yet, juicing was already a fairly open (if dirty) secret in the bodybuilding world, even in the grubby desert-town gym Lou manages. One day she notices Jackie, a drifter with ambitions of competing in an upcoming women’s contest in Vegas. The attraction is indeed mutual. Unfortunately, Lou introduces Jackie to steroids during their early courtship, which will have dangerous implications when their relationship comes under stress.

Much of that stress will come from Lou’s family, particularly her brother-in-law J.J., who physically and emotionally abuses her sister Beth, and her slimy kingpin father Lou Sr. The old man runs a lot of highly illegal business out of his gun range. Jackie happens to work there as a waitress in the canteen. All that pre-existing family tension will soon boil over, leading to one-darned-thing-after-another, including murder.

There is some deep grunge in Love Lies Bleeding—like Grand Canyon deep. This is sleazy, lurid stuff, just as Glass intended it. However, she takes viewers on a wild third-act flight of fancy that is a bridge too-far-out there. She should have stuck with what was working, because all the needles and grime are massively provocative.

Of course, the great Ed Harris makes a terrific villain, strutting through the picture as Lou Sr. Glass gives him a lot of color, like his massive hair extensions and a weird love of bug-collecting, but Harris plays him with shrewd understatement. As a result, his quiet hardnosed-ness is absolutely magnetic on-screen. Likewise, Dave Franco is exceptionally slimy as the irredeemable, mullet-sporting J.J.

JT LeRoy: The True Hoax

It was the biggest literary scandal to rock book groups until James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces was revealed to be a fraud a few months later. At least, the books in question were always billed as novels, even though heavy autobiographical elements were explicitly implied—but implied by whom? In phone interviews, it was Laura Albert, the author who wrote under the LeRoy name and played him in phone interviews, but it was her sister-in-law Savannah Knoop who assumed the role for photo shoots and public appearances. They really didn’t think they pulling a fast one until the story broke according to Justin Kelly’s not so dramatic retelling of the tale in JT LeRoy, which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.

By the time Knoop moved to San Francisco, Albert was already a bestseller under the LeRoy name. For reasons that are never made clear, she felt more comfortable writing her emotional revealing fiction pseudonymously, yet she was still quite possessive of her work. She also enjoyed the game-playing aspect, particularly when she took on the persona of LeRoy’s brash British agent, Speedy. However, LeRoy was developing such a following, she needed the boyish Knoop to serve as LeRoy’s socially awkward, mono-syllabic “body.”

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Weirdly, when Knoop appears as the androgynous LeRoy, she looks and sounds a lot like Johnny Depp. Regardless, it is hard to understand why so many people were apparently so fascinated by a person who is presented to be so painfully shy and charisma-challenged. Frankly, it is altogether baffling when the fictional actress Eva (transparently modeled on Asia Argento, who directed the film adaptation of LeRoy’s The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things) becomes so preoccupied with him (as she knew LeRoy).

To her credit, Kristen Stewart totally dives in and completely immerses herself in the role of LeRoy (or rather Knoop playing LeRoy), whereas as Albert, Laura Dern's homespun histrionics always sound like they were intended for the camera's benefit. Yet, the real problem is Kelly’s screenplay has the depth of a USA Today article. It provides a coherent chronology of events, but gives viewers no sense of anyone’s motives, beyond the most cliched, bargain-basement psycho-sexual analysis.

It is too bad, because Diane Kruger is spectacularly vampy as Eva and Jim Sturgess provides a humanizing dimension as Knoop’s brother (and Albert’s husband), Geoffrey Knoop, but Kelly’s treatment of the material never goes below the superficial surface level. Seriously, do we ever get tired of hearing how sometimes fiction holds a higher form of truth? Arguably, JT LeRoy would be better suited to airings on Lifetime than showings in theaters. Not recommended, it opens tomorrow (4/26) in the LA area, at the AMC Sunset and Laemmle Playhouse and Monica Film Center.

Sundance ’18: Lizzie

Lizzie Borden was the late Nineteenth Century equivalent of the Menendez Brothers. You might remember how she “took an axe.” At least she had her reasons, according to Craig William Macneill’s somewhat speculative Lizzie, which screens during the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

You know the Borden household must be dysfunctional when they insist their new live-in maid, Bridget Sullivan, must be henceforth known as “Maggie,” just like her predecessor. Only Lizzie, the younger Borden sister, shows her the respect of calling her Bridget (actually, the internet says it was the exact opposite, but whatever). Quickly, a friendship blossoms between the socially dissimilar women that slowly evolves into a forbidden love.

Borden resents her father Andrew Borden’s strict rules and suspects he has allowed their wastrel uncle to squander her inheritance through his dodgy schemes. Of course, her father and step-mother Abby find mere friendship between the two young women highly problematic. When they discover the true nature of the relationship, the Borden’s continued domestic life becomes untenable. She will take proactive steps, but it all might be too much for the overwhelmed Sullivan to handle.

Macneill’s previous film The Boy was quite a sinister slow-burner, but the slow-burn of Lizzie is even slower. It truly stacks the deck against Old Man Andrew Borden so thoroughly, it is hard to understand how a just God could allow him to live so long. Of course, it is clear Macneill and screenwriter Bryce Kass set out to court favor with social justice mafia by giving Borden the most feminist, straight male-demonizing spin possible. Perhaps that is all well and good up to a point, but the conspicuous manipulativeness gets exhausting over time.

Still, there is no question Kristen Stewart and Chloë Sevigny do fine work as Sullivan and Ms. Lizzie, respectively. The development of their relationship always feels convincingly organic. Frankly, as Andrew Borden, Jamey Sheridan might as well be reprising the demonic role of Randall Flagg in the 1994 miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand, except that was a much subtler performance. Alas, Kim Dickens and Fiona Shaw are stuck with entirely disposable parts: older sis Emma and stepmom Abby.

Regardless, we give ample credit to the design team that made modern day Savannah credibly pass for turn-of-the-previous-century New England. This is not a bad film, but it will disappoint genre fans who were blown away by the insidious subversive flavor of The Boy. Recommended primarily for Stewart fans and Lizzie Borden obsessives, Lizzie screens again this Thursday (1/25) and Friday (1/26) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Personal Shopper: Assayas Re-Teams with Stewart

For reasons both personal and political, a young American woman in Paris is drawn to the work of Hilma af Klint. Considered the one of the earliest abstract artists, af Klint claimed the geometric shapes she painted were transmitted directly to her hand by the spirit world. Given the recent increase in critical interest, the Moderna Museet probably now regrets turning down the proposed gift of her entire body of work in 1970. Frankly, it might also take a while for audiences and critics to catch up with Olivier Assayas’s latest genre-defying release, which features af Klint’s work prominently. It even stars Kristen Stewart, but it is lightyears more refined than the Twilight franchise. Ghosts are a serious subject, but much about their nature is open to interpretation in Assayas’s Personal Shopper (trailer here), opening this Friday in New York.

Maureen Cartwright lives a solitary existence. She works as a personal shopper for a vain, charity ball-attending celebrity, whom she rarely sees. Most of her instructions come from terse notes left in the jet-setter’s usually un-lived-in Parisian apartment. She is also still mourning the loss of her twin brother Lewis from the genetic heart defect they both shared. At least her soulless celebrity schlepping allows her time to moonlight as a medium.

She also shared with Lewis a "sensitivity" to the spirit world. At one point, they made a pact agreeing the first to die would send back signs to the surviving sibling from wherever. As a result, a freelance assignment to investigate a house associated with Lewis for lingering spirits holds deeply personal implications for Cartwright.

Assayas begins the film with Cartwright arriving to conduct her night-long “séance” and it just might be the most riveting “cold open” you will ever see. He makes it apparent there is some sort of entity hovering just outside Cartwright’s field of vision, but not that of the audience. When things do go bump in the night, it is not clear whether it is her brother attempting to communicate or a malicious spirit trying to deceive her. As a result, Shopper easily boasts some of the most breathlessly tense scenes you will find in a film not intended as a horror movie, per se. The unsettling ambiguity continues when Cartwright starts receiving ominous messages from a mystery texter. Again, it is not clear whether they are coming from a benign or malignant spirit, or perhaps a more terrestrial (and physically dangerous) source.

There are no easy answers in Shopper, which is likely to frustrate Twilight fans, but it will leave smarter genre viewers intrigued to the point of obsession. Assayas deliberately gives us scenes that support multiple conclusions, only to contradict them shortly thereafter. Yet, it never feels like he is deliberately toying with viewers. In fact, every frame of the film feels like it fits logically and organically into the whole.

Arguably, Stewart is not stretching so much from the personal assistant she played (so very well) in Assayas’s masterful Clouds of Sils Maria, but she still deserves credit for such an open and vulnerable portrait of spiritual and social alienation. Just as Assayas never wastes a shot, Stewart uses every second to express the doubts and anxieties plaguing Cartwright.

Technically, Stewart valiantly carries Shopper, appearing in nearly every frame of film, often without the benefit of another actor to play off. Yet, it rarely feels like she is “alone,” thanks to Assayas’s remarkable powers of suggestion. It is a masterful example of how subtle elements can be combined to ratchet up suspense. Without question, it represents some of the best work yet from both Assayas and Stewart, his current diva-of-choice. Very highly recommended for fans of ambitious genre cinema, Personal Shopper opens this Friday (3/10) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Tribeca ’16: Equals

In the future, employee fraternization will be strictly forbidden. The entire world will be a “safe place” because all emotions will be “switched-off” at birth. Unfortunately, Silas has contracted “Switched-On Syndrome,” or “the Bug.” As a result, he has it bad for his co-worker, whom he also suspects is similarly afflicted. All love is forbidden and hurts like the dickens in Drake Doremus’s Equals (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Instead of Big Brother, the drones of this Collective are constantly inundated with PSAs designed to maintain public order. Silas has what still ought to be a cool job working as an illustrator, but he constantly asks Nia unnecessary questions about her stories. That makes her uncomfortable, perhaps too uncomfortable. It turns out Nia is indeed a “hider,” who secretly tries to control her SOS symptoms to avoid being ostracized like Silas, who admitted Maoist-style to his stage-one condition.

Silas and Nia soon commence a reckless, highly illegal love affair. He also gets some understanding and practical advice from an underground support group led by Jonas and Bess. The latter will be especially handy to know, since she is a hider working at the Collective’s dreaded Health and Safety Department. Inevitably, Silas and Nia are discovered, at which point Equals becomes a dystopian riff on Romeo & Juliet.

Granted, we have seen this severe future before, but maybe we need to see it again, because we keep forgetting how much freedom we sacrifice when we demand absolute safety from the government. The Switched-Off science of Equals might be speculative, but its implications are already with us. Doremus and his location scouts also help freshen things up with some strikingly neo-futuristic backdrops, including the I.M. Pei designed Miho Museum in Japan and Singapore’s Marina Barrage and Henderson Wave Bridge. If Kristen Stewart fans start making Equals pilgrimages, they might actually learn a little something about modernist architecture and Asian art.

Of course, probably Doremus’ most inspired strategic decision was casting Stewart and Nicholas Hoult as a couple trying to hide their emotions. Presumably, his direction amounted to “be yourselves.” They look perfect together, as if you could stick them on a dystopian wedding cake in World on a Wire or Gattica. Fortunately, Guy Pearce and Jacki Weaver are reliably engaging as Jonas and Bess. Evidently, when an all-powerful collective starts bleaching the human spirit you can still trust Australians. Unfortunately, Claudia Kim is ridiculously under-employed as the PSA voice of the Collective.

In retrospect, the relative reserve of Doremus’s conclusion is rather fitting, even if the optimism is forced. Regardless, it is a stylish and arguably somewhat timely return to the tightly regimented future 1984 and Metropolis warned of decades ago. Recommended for fans of anti-utopian and relationship-driven science fiction, Equals screens again this afternoon (4/21), as a Viewpoints selection of the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.

NYFF ’14: Clouds of Sils Maria

Taking stock of German filmmaker Arnold Fanck is a rather complicated business, considering he was a close associate of Leni Riefenstahl. Still, he remains one of the most accomplished mountaineering filmmakers of the silent era, so it is not outrageous when his documentary short Cloud Phenomenon of Maloja assumes a prominent place in Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Marria (trailer here), which screens as a Main Slate selection of the 52^nd New York Film Festival.

Fanck’s silent film never ceased to fascinate the soon-to-be-late Fassbinder-ish Wilhelm Melchior, who titled his most famous play The Maloja Snake in reference to the serpentine cloud formation it documents. Maria Enders’ career ignited when she appeared in the film version, also directed by Melchoir, playing a ruthlessly manipulative young woman engaged in a lesbian relationship-slash-power struggle with an older, more sophisticated woman. Although many years have passed, she is reluctant to accept the more mature and tragic role, for a variety of reasons rooted in insecurity and superstition (the actress who starred opposite her died shortly thereafter). However, her personal assistant Val thinks it is a fine idea, because of her respect for the innovative director, Klaus Diesterweg, and her prospective co-star, the Lindsay Lohan-esque Jo-Ann Ellis.

Val and Diesterweg apparently prevail, but Enders constantly threatens to pull out of the production. She is profoundly uncomfortable with the different meanings she finds in the text after her reversal of roles. In fact, it seems to speak directly to her relationship with Val, especially when they rehearse her lines. The tabloid circus following Ellis also spooks the extremely guarded Enders.

If the Weinsteins had picked up Clouds, Juliette Binoche would have been an instant Oscar frontrunner. It is a performance of strange and understated power, befitting the character clearly modeled to some extent on herself. The implied self-referential nature of the film thereby makes her scenes with Kristen Stewart’s Val feel even bolder and revealing.

Unlike the clumsy play-that-becomes-real in Polanski’s wildly over-praised Venus in Fur, Assayas stages the uncomfortably charged rehearsal sequences with such subtle ambiguity, we often lose our narrative bearings within the film, despite being on guard against that very contingency. Of course, everyone has known Binoche is one of the best in the business for some time, but the degree to Stewart matches her intensity is almost revelatory. It is an especially bold performance for her, given the added meta-dimensions, such as Ellis’s affair with a married writer that echoes certain media feeding frenzies Stewart would probably like to forget.

While the film works best as a two-hander, Hanns Zischler is devilishly effective as the older actor with whom Enders once had an ill-advised affair, whereas Chloe Grace Moretz looks the part, but never really adds to our understanding of a hot mess like Ellis. Arguably, the third act is somewhat flat compared to the action that came before, in large measure due to Val’s deliberately mysterious exit. Yet, it is still fascinating to see Binoche’s Enders navigate the world of international celebrity they both know so well. While all signs seem to indicate her time in the spotlight is coming to a close, the Ellises of the world might just be playing Enders’ game after all.

Even with its late pacing issues, Sils Maria is a quite a wry valentine to actresses and the personal assistants who put up with their diva-ness. It is unusual when a film this smart is also so forgiving of human weaknesses. Helmed with considerable sensitivity, it also represents a return to form for Assayas after the messy and somewhat didactic Something in the Air. Recommended for fans of Binoche, Assayas, and Stewart (which really ought to cover just about everyone), Clouds of Sils Maria screens this Wednesday (10/8) and Thursday (10/9) at Alice Tully Hall, as part of this year’s NYFF.