Love Lies Bleeding mixes the Coen brothers' fascination with the once-wild-now-tame West with a grotesquely tactile and gross lens on the human experience rivaling the great John Waters (an ironic twist of fate, as this is the type of cinematic masterpiece Ethan Coen's Drive-Away Dolls thinks it wants to be a snarky parody of). This film then takes that concept and runs with it, through the end zone and out the other side into the stadium's back parking lot. Every frame is shrink-wrapped in this uniquely feminine sexual itch, one that even a cis straight male viewer like me is strongly gravitated toward. The viewer is picked up and thrashed around by the sickening, swirling tone of the film, pulled through climax after thrilling climax. Once we reach the variably interpretable ending, we don't even care any more, because we're coming down from the high and realizing we survived. The end result reads like something out of Hunter Thompson's personal dream journal.
The cast of talented performers only elevates the already masterful material, with a career performance by Ed Harris, break-out roles for Anna Baryshnikov and Katy O'Brian, and let's not forget little Franco's sleazy imitation of Big Brother.
I can't wait to see more of Rose Glass's work. She is cinematic voice for a generation no longer playing the part the humble townsfolk, accosted by handsome men wandering out of the sandy, grainy filmstock. Now we are that stranger in that strange land, the West. The West is all around us, a breathing, living thing that takes us in. If you don't watch your step, the ground beneath your feet will open up and swallow you whole.