The name of the British Rose Glass burst into the film industry five years ago with her disturbing horror debut, Saint Maud, which garnered very positive reviews. With her second feature film, Blood on the Lips, she raises the bar with a powerful lesbian thriller filled with sweat, violence, gasoline, vomit and steroids. Starring Kristen Stewart as an introverted manager of a local New Mexico gym, and Katy O'Brian as a bodybuilder who crosses her path while heading to a competition in Las Vegas, the film opens this Friday the 12th. April in Spanish cinemas thanks to Filmin and Avalon after revolutionizing the last Berlinale.
What made you want to write and direct a story as brutal as this?
Well, Saint Maud was written by myself and for this film I went to my friend Weronika Tofilska and presented her with a very vague version of the idea, something that had to do with a bodybuilder who is having some kind of nervous breakdown while retraining for a competition. We both basically locked ourselves in a room and spent many, many weeks trying to take the story in different directions and wanting to make the audience laugh and entertain as much as possible.
And why did you opt for bodybuilding? What attracted you to the 1980s?
The decade came later. I mean, bodybuilding was definitely the big thing from the beginning. I really loved the idea of telling a story about a woman who wants to become a bodybuilder because I think it's a really fascinating kind of sports performance art. There is something quite anarchic, beautiful and strange about bodybuilding itself. You put in all that incredible strength and training, you become very physically strong, but in the end you end up being judged on something completely aesthetic and nothing to do with physical strength. So it seemed like an interesting, psychologically interesting kind of territory to me. And then, I guess, the '80s were perfect for that kind of world. In retrospect, we think of it as a decade of excess and, I don't know, ambition, greed, all that kind of stuff. It was the most appropriate backdrop and it was fun to achieve.
I guess it wasn't easy to find the perfect actress to play the bodybuilder Jackie...
It was actually very difficult. I felt quite naive, because going into it I thought it would be easy. I thought there must be a lot of them, because bodybuilding is such an artistic thing that I thought there would be amazing actresses out there. We started looking months before we started filming and we saw so many different people and bodybuilders, but also weightlifters, wrestlers, all these different types of athletic women who hadn't really acted before. From the beginning, I knew that it was very important to find someone who really convinced me as a bodybuilder. But Jackie's character also implies a great dramatic role, as much as she has that intense and muscular strength in that aspect, the character is actually quite sweet and naive considering the world in which she moves. So we started to get very nervous because I was already in the United States with the preparations and we still hadn't found Jackie. Luckily, Katy saw a tweet that our casting directors had posted and she contacted us. She is an actress and had experience in bodybuilding. She's a martial artist, so she's constantly throughout her life been training and I think she said that she likes bodybuilding workouts for fun. She sent us the tape of it and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
Did you always think of Kristen Stewart for the character of Lou?
Yes. With her everything was much easier. I started imagining it when we started writing because you always think about your ideal casting. Another thing is whether they later accept or not. I secretly prayed that he would say yes. Kristen had seen Saint Maud and she liked it, so she signed up right away.
What has it been like to work with her?
It has been a pleasure to work with her. We liked each other from the first day. And I was very nervous at our first meeting. She's very modest and I think she loves making movies, on a practical level. She enjoys being part of the team and all that kind of stuff. She is not at all vain, which is fortunate, because in this film at the beginning we already see her with her arm thoroughly cleaning a toilet. She was willing to do anything to make this movie believable and she dove in head first.
Were you surprised by the stir that was created at the Berlinale over the sex scenes?
The truth is yes, but maybe, again, it could be somewhat naive on my part. When you're making a movie you kind of lose sight of what things are going to catch people's attention. The way people have been talking about it, you'd think there was a lot more sex in the movie than there really is. The film shows two people falling in love for the first time, so sex will always be an important part. And I guess, as with any scene, you just want to do it well and make it compelling. When I wrote it with Weronica we tried to make it as real and detailed as possible. Movie sex often ends up being quite repetitive and I wanted a little variety.
Explicit violence also abounds...
Sex and violence are important ingredients in cinema, and to be honest, both are a lot of fun to write and film. And on both counts, with scenes of sex and violence, it's something I enjoy about the movie. Deep down it's a bit like choreography. And yeah, I think going into the movie, I always knew I wanted it to be something sexy and sweaty and bombastically violent. At its core, the movie is about someone who is a bodybuilder and there is a kind of extreme, natural physicality. Maybe it doesn't make sense until people have seen the movie, but there are certain things that the characters do and we needed something very extreme to motivate them to do it. It was about analyzing people's morals, how people justify violence to themselves. I don't know. It's fun to take everything to the extreme. Maybe I'm not a very subtle person.
There are several moments in the film that recall the cinema of Tarantino and Nicolas Winding Refn. Are they directors you admire?
As a teenager I was very excited to see Tarantino's films for the first time. With my friends we played imitating scenes from Reservoir Dogs and things like that. But I never consciously thought about him or Winding Refn when directing the film. I was a little self-conscious because I didn't want the film to reference very recognizable films. I just didn't revisit any violent '80s movies, but I did suggest to the actors that they watch Showgirls, Saturday Night Fever, and Crash. Maybe the movie exists somewhere in that mix, in some kind of strange cross section, but with many changes and very exaggerated.
If in Saint Maud he talked about psychological terror, in Blood on the Lips you could say that the terror comes from a toxic family with Ed Harris as Lou's criminal father
Yes, Lou's father is a criminal and she would want to leave the city and strike out on her own. But as with many of us, she carries the weight of a family burden that holds her back. I guess the kind of problem she's facing is that she's too paralyzed and feels like a coward to do anything about it. Her sister Beth lives in a horrible situation with a man who abuses her, but she says she loves him. It's one of those desperate situations where, from an outside perspective, it seems impossible to know what to do. Therefore, when Jackie appears, she is obviously shown in a very exaggerated scenario, but she represents everything that Lou wants to do to help her sister. And in that sense, Jackie's appearance in her life, which is all action, is like her getting a wish come true. I think people are very good at saying, 'Oh, I would never do that, I'm nothing like my family.' But maybe it's too easy to end up being more like your parents than you'd like to admit.
