Kristen Stewart in an interview about “Love Lies Bleeding” and her role as Lou.
What a love story: Lou, the daughter of the local gang boss, runs a gym in the dullest backwater of New Mexico. When the aspiring bodybuilder Jackie ends up there - confident, ambitious and damn sexy - the two fall in love and dream of escaping together. But they haven't reckoned with Lou's father, played brilliantly nasty by film veteran Ed Harris. He'll stop at nothing, even his own daughter's dead bodies if necessary. The young British director Rose Glass ("Saint Maud") sends Kristen Stewart and martial artist Katy O'Brian on a crackling trip full of pitch-black humor, unbridled violence and a pulsating Eighties soundtrack: "Love Lies Bleeding" is the most uncompromising film of the summer and a whole new chapter in Kristen Stewart's impressive career. We met her in Berlin for a chat.
Kristen Stewart in an interview about “Love Lies Bleeding”
VOGUE: Lifting, pumping, eating protein – is weight training your thing in real life?
Kristen Stewart: I've always had an aversion to weight training if you do it purely for aesthetic reasons. Going to the gym to be as attractive as possible? I've never been interested. Nevertheless, it's a good feeling to know your own strength, to really be in control of every inch of your body. I can understand that it's like an adrenaline rush and you can be obsessed with it. But that doesn't really affect my character Lou. At the beginning of the film, she tries to take up as little space as possible, almost as if she were going to die out. But then she meets Katy, who comes over the city like a primal force, who is brazen and impudent and, above all, doesn't deny herself. And that sets something in motion in Lou that is beautiful, but also disgusting and terrible. Everything has two sides.
Going to the gym to be as attractive as possible? I was never interested.
In addition to the violence, the focus is also on the amour fou between the two dissimilar women. The topic of queerness is dealt with rather casually.
Lou is allowed to simply exist as a character in this film. She simply lives her life. I was happy to play a queer character who doesn’t lecture others on how to deal with queerness. Our film is of course not the first in which this is the case. But I think that very often the audience's perspectives are to be broadened with a raised index finger. People are encouraged to articulate themselves and create space for alternative points of view. That's good. But at the same time, we work in an industry that is about making money. It's difficult to realize projects that have not yet proven their suitability for success. Being one of the first is always difficult. Many films tick off a kind of checklist in terms of their share of marginal phenomena. According to the motto: Here we have a film in which a woman is the focus. But then she has to at least overcome a nasty argument or have a coming out in the course of the plot. When you pitch a film project, the first question from the financiers is: "What should people take away from the cinema?" I hope that people can just watch our film and absorb it, that they can feel the desire, the curiosity, the love and be inspired by it.
Many films tick off a kind of checklist in terms of their share of marginal phenomena. According to the motto: Here we have a film in which a woman is the focus. But then she has to overcome at least one nasty argument or come out in the course of the plot.
In "Love Lies Bleeding" there is intense love, lies and a lot of blood...
...which is why there is a lot of cleaning. Lou has to clean all the time: clogged toilets, brain matter, pools of blood. Humans are violent by nature, that's how they have opened up the world. You want to love Lou as the main character of the film and be on her side. But people also do bad things to protect and preserve their pleasure, their comfort or even their family. We humans are prepared to do almost anything for that - and we glorify this idea! So it only depends on the context whether an action is bad or good. Instead of going to therapy, Lou tried to go underground and ignore her problems and traumas. At some point everything comes up, her overloaded self-deception system collapses and then the crap really starts. And as for the lies, Lou telling herself that her criminal father is to blame for everything and that she is one of the good guys helps her clean up the mess. But what really scares her is how similar she and her father really are. The flashbacks show Lou as a young woman with her father, at a time when she was very much involved in all the evil, violent dealings. In these scenes I literally look like Bella Swan (Stewart's famous role in the "Twilight" films, editor's note). I have long hair and wear a buttoned-up western shirt. Lou only developed her hairstyle, taste in music and clothing style after she separated from her family. Nobody in this small town looks like her or listens to her music. That was very difficult in the 1980s, a time before the Internet. Back then there were no cool vintage shops where you could find the perfect muscle shirt to match your style. The cigarette thing was very hard for me, by the way, because Lou smokes non-stop. But for every scene in which she smokes in the finished film, there were at least six shots and ten takes in which I had to smoke. If you have to eat cheeseburgers for a scene, at least there's a bucket next to it in which you can spit the food out after each take. But cigarettes?! I almost died, I couldn't breathe.
How did it go for your film father Ed Harris?
Ed is the most emotional and poetic Marlboro Man in the world! A cool guy, a real guy, hot and sweet and attentive to everyone on set. But admittedly he didn't like the script.
And he still went along with it?
He said to Rose and me: "Okay, ladies. I don't really understand what this is supposed to be. But I'll help you do whatever you want to do anyway." Ed Harris is so nice! He sees his job, as he always emphasizes, as a service to the filmmakers. Luckily, he liked the finished film afterwards and said to me: "I'm really blown away. This thing works really well!" What more could you want?
