33 year-old Kristen Stewart has been out for quite a few years now. She officially announced on SNL in September ’17, but I recall getting slapped around by the HE commentariat a year or two earlier for saying that I found one of her girlfriends too butch and that if I were Stewart (rich, famous, pick of the litter) I would go for someone foxier.
Anyway, Variety‘s Adam B. Vary has posted a 1.11.24 piece called “How Kristen Stewart Became A Queer Trailblazer“, and I’m like “we’re doing this again?” How many times can Stewart be celebrated for being out and proud? Are we going to be reading a similar cover story in 2030, when Stewart is 39?
As you read the article you can feel Vary’s emotional investment in Stewart’s bold-as-brass queerness. It turns him on, lights him up, gets him off.
Vary adopted this “yay, team!” approach because Stewart is promoting Love Lies Bleeding, a Sundance ’24 attraction about a hot lesbian love affair.
About 20 days ago I wrote that I don’t find Love Lies Bleeding especially appealing as neither Stewart (whose character looks plain and butchy and wears bad mullet hair) nor costar Katy O’Brian seem especially attractive, at least in this instance. The commentariat bitches beat me up for saying that also.
My first thought as I watched the trailer for Rose Glass‘s Love Lies Bleeding (A24, 3.8), a blue-collar lesbian melodrama, was “nope, not for me.”
The second thought was “they’re taunting me…they want me to mansplain how the two leads are too butchy and therefore unappealing to Joe and Jane Popcorn.” Which they are.
Plus the fact that Kristen Stewart has clearly tried to butch herself down — not a hint of makeup, shaggy mullet — and Katy O’Brian is too stocky and buffed up, and frankly not all that classically fetching. I’m sorry but we can’t all be beautiful or button-cute.
A queer cinema landmark? Perhaps among a certain independent film sorority or within Venice Beach body-building circles, but you can’t seriously expect guys like myself to say “hmmm, looks interesting…I’ll definitely give it a shot.” C’mon, man…they’re not that attractive! Sorry but I’m more of a lipstick lesbian kinda guy
Bleeding will debut at Sundance ’24, and that’s where it belongs. Costarring Ed Harris, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov and Dave Franco.
