Sumith Prasad
Rose Glass’s romantic thriller film ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ ends with a shocking turn of events. Jaqueline “Jackie” Cleaver rescues her partner, Louise “Lou” Langston, from the hands of the latter’s father, Lou Sr., by turning into a fifty-foot giant out of nowhere. Even though she gives her girlfriend an opportunity to kill the crime lord, Lou decides against it and joins the former as a giant herself to run through the clouds. This immensely puzzling ending becomes one of the prominent attractions of the narrative, especially because it doesn’t seem out of place despite being rooted in absurdity. A closer look at the film reveals hints and clues that lead up to the emergence of the giants! SPOILERS AHEAD.
A Manifestation of Jackie’s Superiority
Jackie arrives in Lou’s desert town in New Mexico with high ambitions to become a champion bodybuilder. When it comes to her passion, she is committed and hard-working beyond comparison. While her peers have to rely on steroids, Jackie initially develops her body without any similar substances. She is proud of her naturally built physique, which she flexes alone whenever she can, even during her breaks as a waitress. Even though these features and characteristics may seem ordinary for typical bodybuilders, there is more to them. Jackie’s borderline narcissistic love for her body indicates that she considers herself a superior being.
“If you take the literal bodybuilding competition element out of it, what [Jackie] wants to be is almost like a god or a statue,” Rose Glass told Inverse about the bodybuilder’s feelings of superiority. What Jackie ultimately wants is to become an indomitable force that justifies the fifty-foot body she transforms into. The bodybuilding championship in Las Vegas that she aspires to win is one way for her to elevate herself to such an invulnerable existence. That can be the reason why she leaves for the Sin City to take part in the competition, irrespective of the police investigation she caused by the murder of JJ.
When Lou fears the authorities, Jackie barely acknowledges their potency since she views herself as more powerful. The bodybuilder doesn’t even hesitate to leave her girlfriend’s house to go to the gym, where she can flex her body and cherish her existence as a God-like figure. Likewise, the way she brutally murders JJ is another example that makes it clear that Jackie doesn’t think she is a mere human. After Beth gets hospitalized due to the abusive actions of her husband, both Lou and Lou Sr. accept that killing him is not the best decision to deal with the predicament. However, the bodybuilder disagrees.
Jackie kills JJ, smashing his head brutally, by becoming his executioner. She goes to his house and takes his life like a God who has the authority to punish mere humans. The murder is nothing but a display of her seemingly superhuman power, which she hides within her. The same potency makes her a giant, this time to punish Lou Sr., the most powerful among her enemies. Throughout the movie, Jackie’s muscles have been visibly expanding, only for them to make her a giant when she battles her strongest adversary.
The Invincibility of Jackie and Lou’s Love
Jackie’s transformation into a giant is followed by Lou’s growth to become an equally large figure. Together, holding hands, they run through a “dreamy realm,” which very well can be seen as love. At this point, their change can be associated with the invincibility brought by their unwavering feelings for each other. “They [Jackie and Lou] feel elated and invincible, and all the things you can feel when you’re head over heels in love,” Rose Glass added to Inverse. As far as Lou is concerned, she is someone who has been denied love for a long time. Her mother disappeared more than a decade ago, and her father saw her as a “sidekick” who could kill for him rather than as a daughter.
Meanwhile, Lou’s sister, Beth, is in an abusive relationship to even care about the former. The lack of love she has experienced throughout her life has left her vulnerable. The powerlessness she deals with is evident in her working for her father despite hating him. Rather than escaping from him and his “Louville,” she chooses to remain in the desert town, putting her hand in clogged toilet bowls filled with feces and blood. She is too weak to fight her intrusive thoughts, which forces her to revisit her traumas from time to time. This impotence changes when she falls in love.
After forming a relationship with Jackie, she acquires power from her love for the bodybuilder. The first time she stands against Lou Sr. is to stop him from handing Jackie over to the authorities as a murderer. She fights for her love even against her powerful father, who has found a way to silence his daughter until the arrival of the bodybuilder. Lou’s emotions liberate her from her weakness, only for her to become a giant who symbolizes the invincibility of love Glass mentioned to Inverse. The dreamy realm through which she runs with Jackie can be seen as a physical representation of the security and comfort she feels with her partner.
In that dreamy land, Jackie and Lou don’t need to worry about anything but love. The romantic thriller concludes with a hint that indicates that the two giants can be the imagination of the bodybuilder. Jackie looking at the sky with a visible frenzy can be the result of this possible imagination. She must have let love conquer her feelings to join her girlfriend. Katy O’Brian, who plays Jackie, also believes that is the reason behind her character’s transformation. “So that informed the self – I’d achieved what I’d wanted to achieve, and it wasn’t getting mild fame through bodybuilding; it was saving the love of my life, essentially,” the actress told Radio Times.
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