Love Lies Bleeding director Rose Glass on why women's muscles are still 'shocking and subversive'

“Some people say less is more… I am not one of those people.” Rose Glass is a startling filmmaker, but this is the least surprising statement she’s made. We’re at Glasgow Film Festival, the morning after her wild new movie Love Lies Bleeding has received a rapturous welcome at its UK premiere, and the fast-rising writer-director is explaining her desire to always “take a big swing”.

If you saw her first feature, the chilling horror Saint Maud, you’ll already know Glass’s palette runs to the shocking, the lurid, the eccentric, the melodramatic. Featuring elements of both body and religious horror, the English director’s debut was an unnerving story of faith, madness, death and salvation in the fading seaside town of Scarborough. It signalled the arrival of a serious new talent.

Her second finds us in a very different genre – set in the dusty hinterlands of New Mexico, Love Lies Bleeding traces its lineage through Americana and blood-splashed revenge thrillers, but is every bit as heightened as its predecessor. Kristen Stewart stars as Lou, a lonely gym manager who falls hard for Jackie, a driven bodybuilder who drifts through on her way to pursue her musclebound dreams in Las Vegas (played with energetic commitment by actress, martial artist and former police officer Katy O’Brian). The pair are soon shacked up together, enjoying egg white omelettes and lots of vivid, sweaty sex. But their love nest isn’t to last, and soon Lou’s criminal family pull the couple into a seamy underworld of violence, drugs, betrayal and murder.

“Coming off the back of Saint Maud, I just really wanted to take some risks,” says Glass. “And, I guess, try something I wasn’t totally sure I could pull off or not. So that’s how it ended up wading into some crazy, thriller sort of territory. But the initial story hook was just that I really liked the idea of doing a film about an incredibly muscular woman. And looking at how and why she got like that. It seemed like psychologically interesting kind of territory.”

Since bodybuilder Steve Reeves starred in 1958’s Hercules, through Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, all the way up to the mega-stars of the Marvel universe, we’ve been used to seeing male film stars who know their way around the free weights. But for women, getting buff is still “a subversive act”, says Glass. “There’s just so many more complicated and often negative reactions associated with female muscularity. Male muscularity is celebrated. Female muscularity still shocks some people.”

Glass’s interest in muscley women predates the return of lycra-clad, Saturday-night heroes the Gladiators, though the timing of the film’s release not long after the BBC successfully brought the series back is an interesting coincidence.

In fact, the inspiration for Love Lies Bleeding goes back to the very beginnings of female bodybuilding to pioneering American bodybuilder Lisa Lyon. The first women’s world champion of bodybuilding, Lyon notably worked with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the early 80s to create a series of erotic images that still challenge traditional assumptions about female beauty and strength. Lyon sadly died in September 2023, but her image at the peak of her Playboy-featured success lives on in Jackie’s styling – right down to her mop of curls.

During research and writing, Glass fell for the “self-expressive, performance” side of bodybuilding. That respect for the sport comes through in the film, but the diminutive director never did go as far as to start lifting herself. “At one point in when I was writing, I was like, I’m gonna use this as motivation to get really fit and healthy,” she smiles. “Instead, I didn’t. I was a bit more like Lou, so I was constantly just trying and failing to quit smoking.”

Like Saint Maud, Love Lies Bleeding ratchets up and up to a truly eye-popping finale. We won’t ruin it for you here, but suffice to say it cements Glass as a leading light in the new generation of genre film auteurs. Gratifyingly, some of the most daring of these young writer-directors are women. Along with Glass, we have both Emerald Fennell (Saltburn, Promising Young Woman) and Julia Ducournau (Raw, Titane). This is cause for some celebration, particularly in an industry in which female talent is still desperately under-represented behind the camera. In 2023, women made up just 16% of directors and 17% of writers on the top 250 grossing US films, according to the Celluloid Ceiling Report. It’s exciting to think things may be starting to change, Glass says.

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“I can only speak for myself,” she explains, “and I’m still coming from a fairly privileged, white-middle-class kind of standpoint, but I’ve certainly felt very supported and encouraged throughout my career. I’m sure that’s hugely benefiting from much tougher experiences other women had in the past, where they haven’t been afforded the same kind of opportunity. It definitely feels like I’ve had a good experience, and I hope that I hope that many, many more women continue to do so.”

Hear, hear. For her part, Glass confirms she’s already “writing a thing, which I’m very excited about”. Will it be another big swing? “Oh, yes. In a different way to this one. I think if you’re not scaring yourself a little bit, then what’s the point?”

Love Lies Bleeding is in cinemas now.