Kristen Stewart is a generational idol who is difficult to resist. The actress with the most beautiful eyes in Hollywood has the eye of
Picasso's
Guernica
tattooed on her right arm .
Heir to Jodie Foster in the Olympus of stars, Stewart played her daughter at the age of 12 in
David Fincher's
thriller
Panic Room
. Since then, her filmography is the fascinating mirror of a career as popular (the
Twilight
saga ) as it is complex and daring (
A Journey to Sils María
,
Personal Shopper
,
Spencer
). At 34 years old, having become an open
queer
muse , something unthinkable not so long ago, Stewart once again offers samples of her particular instinct as a star in the crazy and wild
Blood on the Lips
.
Directed by the British Rose Glass—who debuted in 2019 with the surprising
Saint Maud
, a horror and holiness film set on the English coast whose vitiated atmosphere looked at some references of the New Hollywood—
Blood on the Lips
immerses itself in a world of
rednecks
and bodybuilding from deep America to configure a landscape in which the imagery of Hulk-like body horror intersects with a certain
trash
fantasy of
Showgirls
, Paul Verhoeven's post-feminist cult film.
Stewart's character is that of a unfortunate woman with shaved, greasy hair who works at a roadside gym in New Mexico. Her routine, presented as a crude parade of sewage and garbage, will stop when an explosive bodybuilder appears at the store. But the torrid display of sex and steroids will soon transform into something else, a
thriller
and a violent revenge film in which Glass deploys an imaginary that crosses the romantic flight forward of
Thelma and Louise
with the subversive look at the body of
Titane
, by Julia Ducournau.
With this cocktail of references, the director frames her criminal drama in an eighties aesthetic that exudes humor and violence. Glass relies on the charisma of Stewart but also on the muscular sensuality of Katy O'Brian and on an electric actor, Ed Harris, in the role of the protagonist's gangster father. The father-daughter relationship knows little, but Harris, a bald man with long hair who seems to be taken from a countercultural comic—it is impossible not to think of the Slober from the artist Ceesepe's first comics—functions as an unbridled patriarchal shadow. But if the crazy game of this sordid and romantic film comes together, and that includes its extravagant finale, it is thanks to Stewart, who in addition to displaying her talent as an actress, delves into her profitable image of a
neopunk
and
queer
heroine .
blood on the lips
Address
: Rose Glass.
Starring:
Kristen Stewart, Katy O'Brian, Ed Harris, Dave Franco, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov.
Genre:
thriller.
United Kingdom, 2024.
Duration:
104 minutes.
Premiere: April 12.
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