LOVE LIES BLEEDING

I went in to this with low expectations and came out pleasantly satisfied. Rose Glass’ sophomore feature didn’t break any new ground but it’s certainly a solid popcorn movie. I think some people are eager to make this out to be something more than it is due to the sexuality within the film but at the end of the day it’s nothing more than a fun crime story. And that’s totally fine. Contrary to what a lot of critics try to push nowadays, some movies exist for entertainment and/or a momentary escape. Everything isn’t some radical or political statement. On a surface level, Love Lies Bleeding rests somewhere between the cinema of Nicolas Winding Refn and a more polished/mimicked iteration of early Gregg Araki. I was eager to compare this to stuff like Wild at Heart & Thelma & Lousie but Glass herself made a point to avoid tapping in to those films. Also, making that kind of comparison is like calling something that’s slightly weird; “Lynchian”. It’s cheap. 

Speaking of cheap and things being incorrectly labeled as “Lynchian” – there is a shot of a dark road at night in Love Lies Bleeding so I’m sure some critics jumped at the chance to compare it to Lost Highway.

Because so much of the DNA and ingredients of [Love Lies Bleeding] is so easily connectable to so many other films — Wild at Heart, Thelma and Louise, True Romance, anything with two lovers with guns and murder in extremity — I was wary about not wanting it to [revisit them] – Rose Glass, Hollywood Reporter

At this point, a movie like Thelma & Louise is so popular that you can’t avoid some type of subconscious influence but there’s no unique connection between the two films outside of the desert and two women kind of on the run…

I've never seen Thelma and Louise but that's so famous that even if you haven't seen it, you sort of feel like you have, so I'm sure it has an influence somewhere – Rose Glass, Theskinny.co.uk

Again – this feels like it was birthed from someone trying to pay homage to Gregg Araki with way more budget and a bit less grit. That may sound a little harsh but even with criticisms like that, I really did enjoy Love Lies Bleeding overall. I couldn’t find any interviews where Glass name-drops Araki as a source of inspiration but some of the similarities in the movie, intentional or not, are undeniable…

Doom Generation / Love Lies Bleeding

Doom Generation / Love Lies Bleeding

While the basic romance/crime story has been done before to some degree, Glass throws in things like female bodybuilding and random moments of surreality to try and stand out from other sweaty cigarette stenched crime capers (if you’re looking for a more direct comparison, Love Lies Bleeding is definitely a first cousin to something like Bound). There are a handful of scenes in this movie that seem a little random for the sake of being random but I’m honestly not mad at that.

This story is set in the 80’s and for someone not even born in that decade, Glass does an excellent job of not falling in to the trap of dressing all the characters up in neon windbreakers & rayban sunglasses. It seems like whenever a filmmaker wants to set a film in the 80s, the first thing they do is make everything neon & cheesy. The 80’s was not all MTV, Boy George & Madonna. I was born in 1981. My memory of the 80’s was a lot of cigarette smoke, ugly carpets (that trapped in all the cigarette smoke) and the color palettes were often browns & oranges as apposed to neon pinks & yellows. Again – Love Lies Bleeding has a bit too much sheen for a seedy 1980’s Reno, Nevada crime story, but there is a genuine attempt at trying to capture the 80s. The smells, the ashtrays, the faded jeans, etc…

The small handful of cinematic references that Glass openly pulls from are also a bit outside of the box. Instead of the aforementioned Thelma & Louise or Wild At Heart, Glass pulls from sources like Paul Verhoeven and 1960s B-movies. These influences are even more interesting to me because her first film, Saint Maud, pulled from folks like Bergman & Polanski (a lot of people claimed there was Tarkovsky in Saint Maud but according to Glass, she wasn’t very familiar with his work at the time).

Showgirls was just one of those films that I remember watching when I was probably too young to watch it quite late one night on TV - Rose Glass, The Hollywood Reporter

Showgirls / Love Lies Bleeding

Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman / Love Lies Bleeding

Contrary to what one might assume, the Refn similarities lie in the music and the random spurts of violence and not the fascination with trying to replicate the 80’s as some sort of Andy Warhol/David Lachapelle/pop art fever dream.

A FEW WORDS ON JANET PLANET *UPDATED*

For those that don’t know - I’m not only from western Massachusetts but I’m a former classmate of Janet Planet director Annie Baker (not trying to name-drop. I just think it would be odd to not mention that). I don’t think my opinion on this movie holds more weight than anyone else who’s seen it, but I think I know the basic material more than the average person. Not the deeper coming of age story of an 11 year old girl and the close relationship with her quietly eccentric mother. But all the ancillary elements are very near & dear to my heart. It’s impossible for me to not feel nostalgic watching this. The first time I saw it I spent half the time pointing out to all the very real places I grew up in & around. Amherst is a very unique place. I know everyone with some kind of hometown pride always says that about wherever they’re from but people that aren’t even from Amherst that have spent time there have confirmed that it’s unlike anywhere else. It’s incredibly liberal (sometimes laughably liberal when compared to the rest of the world) and sometimes pretentious but well-meaning at the end of the day. I couldn’t imagine growing up anywhere else. Amherst is where I learned about weird movies and music which is a huge part of who I am today. I can confirm that this movie captures the vibe of early 90’s Western, Mass. The wooded areas, the architecture, the clothes, the aging hippies — all of it. 

It’s just nice to see specific landmarks that you grew up with in a movie directed by someone that’s actually from where the story takes place. If you’re from places like Toronto, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago or New York City - it’s fairly common to see familiar landmarks show up in movies. That’s not the case when you’re from Western Massachusetts. We’re usually an afterthought or incorrectly attached to the other side of the state. So much of our personality is based on telling non-new England folks that we aren’t from Boston or that we’re different from Boston people. …At least that’s how it was for me post-high school (to be clear - we are very different from the people on the eastern side of the state in that we’re less aggressive and aren’t as angry).

Mount Pollox Conservation Area, Amherst Massachusetts

The parking lot of the Hampshire Mall, Hadley Massachusetts

Tobacco barn in Hadley

Masonic Street Mural, Northampton Massachusetts 

A huge chunk of this movie's personality is the result of watching & appreciating a wide range of cinema and paying homage to it. I mean that in a good way. There’s lots of visual references in this. It wouldn’t be out of line to program Janet Planet on a double bill with something like Fanny and Alexander or Welcome To The Dollhouse (a film that co-stars Amherst alumni; Eric Mabius). Annie Baker subconsciously borrowed from movies in that lane. That’s actually what I liked most about her film. If you’re familiar with this blog then this shouldn't come as a surprise. That's all I seem to care about with movies these days. This is very much her own unique vision but she’s been very open about her cinematic inspirations. I caught some immediately without having to do any research. Others I learned about through reading interviews and listening to Q&As.
Some of the comparisons below might seem a little forced or vague, but I think I captured the ones that are most key/important:

Watching it gets you in touch with all the times you've felt horribly depressed and also overwhelmed by the beauty and color of everything around you - Janet Planet, Criterion

Documenteur / Janet Planet

I’ve seen this movie [Fanny and Alexander] more times than I can count. I think it’s the best movie about being a kid ever made. It’s a fairy tale and a nightmare and a totally believable portrayal of a Swedish family in Uppsala at the turn of the twentieth century, all at the same time. It has always reminded me of one of my favorite novels, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. It’s also a movie about the weird magic of theater . . . Both the opening sequence and the reading from Strindberg at the end kill me. And the way Bergman shoots inanimate objects . . . The statues and the toy angels and the clocks and the puppets and the lamps . . . They’re all watching Alexander, the whole movie - Annie Baker, Criterion

Fanny and Alexander / Janet IPlanet

Fanny and Alexander / Janet IPlanet

Fanny and Alexander / Janet Planet

I saw this when I was twenty-five or twenty-six and really confused about my work. I was so discouraged and had stopped writing, and this movie made me excited to start working again. Akerman was doing something with pace and composition and time that I'd always wanted to do but had been too chicken to acknowledge or go toward. Watching this made me realize that you should make the kind of art you want to see, which sounds kind of obvious but was a big revelation to me at the time - Annie Baker, criterion

Jeanne Dielman... / Janet Planet

Jeanne Dielman... / Janet Planet

growing up in Amherst, Mass., in the '80s and '90s, you see a lot of political puppet theater - Annie Baker, The New York Times

The Meadows Green / Janet Planet

The Meadows Green / Janet Planet

The filmmaker I would say my D.P. and my editor and I discussed the most was Maurice Pialat, especially his film "L'Enfance Nue." Another movie that is very important to me is [Victor] Erice's "Spirit of the Beehive." We also talked about [Abbas Kiarostami's films about children, and my sound designer Paul and I talked a lot about [Apichatpong] Weerasethakul, and went to see "Tropical Malady" together - Annie Baker, The New Yorker

The Spirit Of The Beehive / Janet Planet

The Spirit Of The Beehive / Janet Planet

Uncle Boonmee / Janet Planet

Uncle Boonmee / Janet Planet

Uncle Boonmee / Janet Planet

L'enfance Nue / Janet Planet

Ten / Janet Planet

Tropical Malady / Janet Planet

Uncle Boonmee / Janet Planet

A FEW WORDS ON THE CINEMATIC INFLUENCES ON SALTBURN

The Shining / Saltburn

The biggest praise I have for Saltburn is that Rosemund Pike was finally given a role worthy of her talents. I don’t care if you like Saltburn or not (I thought it was “fine” overall). But I don’t think it can be denied that once she appears in the film around the 30-something minute mark - the tone completely changes. I mean that in the best way possible. The movie just instantly becomes better. It’s a testament to her aura. Richard Grant’s performance shouldn’t go unnoticed nor should Barry Keoghan’s (this is yet another example of how he shines best when he plays a deceptive little freak like in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer).

But this isn’t a review of Saltburn. Enough has already been said about the movie. We don’t need another opinion on it floating around. I also get that some folks don’t like Emerald Fennell or her films because she’s a privileged white person that has said some weird things in interviews but we’re not here for that. I don’t care. Please save those think-piece criticisms for Letterboxd, tik tok or an extra long Twitter/X thread that I will be sure to scroll past.

What I’m most fascinated with are the film’s influences and how open Fennell has been about her cinematic reference points (while not every film referenced in Saltburn is easily recognizable - the amount of reference points are almost on the same level as something like Pulp Fiction). 

I found it strange that there were so many video packages of her talking about her influences with almost no actual side-by-side comparisons in said video packages so I went ahead and complied some. I’m sure I missed a few so please make sure to share some you feel I may have left out (again - this is just about references. I don’t care if you hated Saltburn or not).

Kubrick’s dedication to building a world to making a film is something that I have always kind of looked to - Emerald Fennell, IGV Presents 

The Shining / Saltburn

Even without these quotes it’s pretty obvious that just about any modern thriller that takes place inside of a big mansion is going to get some comparison Kubrick’s The Shining… 

The Shining / Saltburn

The Shining / Saltburn

Fennell is also just big fan of Kubrick all together:

We can thrill to the transgressive behaviour of [violent gang] the droogs in the way we can thrill to the transgressive behaviour of Saltburn's utterly entitled snobs - Ermerald Fennell, The Face Magazine 

A Clockwork Orange / Saltburn

A Clockwork Orange / Saltburn

But putting the obvious Kubrick/Shining influence aside, Fennell pulls from other classic psychological thrillers that take place primarily within a home/mansion like The Servant and The Innocents

  

I think it [The Servant]’s one of the all-time great movies - Emerald Fennell, IGV Presents 

The Servant / Saltburn

The Servant / Saltburn

If you're familiar with both films then you might notice that Fennell essentially splits up the Hugo Barrett Servant character in to both Oliver and Duncan from Saltburn

The Servant / Saltburn

The use of space in the house itself is kind of unbelievably well used and is very much like a character in its own which is kind of very important to me when thinking about something like Saltburn - Emerald Fennell, IGV Presents

The Innocents / Saltburn

The Innocents / Saltburn

The Innocents / Saltburn

there's a very famous shot across a pond with a woman across a pond with a woman just sitting in some reads that I think it is one of the most brilliant horror shots ever made - Emerald Fennell, IGV Presents

The Innocents / Saltburn

She also pulls from older British films like Kind Hearts and Coronets…

I think it’s really sort of perceptive about the British class system and kind of quite a dangerous satire - Emerald Fennell, IGV Presents

Kind Hearts and Coronets / Saltburn

Kind Hearts and Coronets / Saltburn

Kind Hearts and Coronets / Saltburn

Kind Hearts and Coronets / Saltburn

Fennell does draw inspiration from more modern filmmakers like Sofia Coppola...

Sofia Coppola is a great example of the modern American Gothic - Emrald Fennell, Glamour Magazine

The Virgin Suicides / Saltburn

Marie Antoinette / Saltburn

Marie Antoinette / Saltburn

To my surprise Fennell was also influenced by a personal favorite of mine: Peter Greenaway…

The cook the thief, the Wife, and his Lover and The Draftsman's Contract were huge - Emerald Fennell, Tumblr

The Draughtsman's Contracts / Saltburn

The Draughtsman's Contracts / Saltburn

Hitchcock can also be found all over her latest film… 

That's the thing I love so much about Hitchcock, obviously bar the slightly unsavory elements of his character, but as a filmmaker, he loved doing it. He had such a fun time. We did too with this movie. I mean, it was hard going, but we had the best time making it - Emerald Fennell, Forbes

Psycho /
Saltburn

Vertigo / Saltburn