YNOT at the Movies

The British director Ross Glass's sophomore feature "Love Lies Bleeding" (USA 2024 | 104 min.) is a blood-soaked neo-noir featuring a few mesmerizing characters. Its unpredictable and often shocking plot makes the film a fun watch, despite the unconvincing love affair between the two lesbian protagonists.

The film is set in 1989 in a sleepy town in New Mexico. Lou (Kristen Stewart) is the manager at a local gym decorated by numerous motivational posters. However, Lou is not motivated at all at work. She is dreadful about the clogged toilets and unruly gym goers. And, she is trying to quit smoking and break up with her on-and-off hookup, Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), who is crazy about Lou.

When a drifter Jackie (Katy O'Brian) comes to the gym pumping iron, Lou immediately falls for her. Jackie is hitchhiking to Las Vegas to participate in a bodybuilding competition. She is an opportunist, and will do anything to advance. She trades sex with JJ (Dave Franco), Lou's abusive brother-in-law, to get a waitress job at a shooting range, owned by Lou's estranged father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris) who has hilarious long hair on the side of his bald head.

Is Jackie attracted to Lou in the same way as Lou is attracted to Jackie? Maybe or maybe not. But Jackie definitely prefers Lou's bed than the concrete underneath an overpass, and she is also delighted by the steroids Lou offered her, and she is going to need that before the competition.

Meanwhile, Lou's family is closely watched by the F.B.I. because of Lou Sr.'s criminal history. Just as the family secrets begin to surface, so do the dead bodies. Lou and Jackie end up on the run, far away from what they have planned for themselves.

The film has some scorching hot lesbian love scenes between Lou and Jackie. But that doesn't mean the love between the two is convincing. They are more likely falling in bed than falling in love. However, no one can mistake the obsession of Daisy toward Lou, who cannot love Daisy back the same way.

Even though the love part isn't quite plausible, the bleeding part is completely realistic in the film. It makes this film a fun memorable trip along the roads that Jackie and Lou are running on. There are many films that have bodies piling up constantly, yet the director Ross Glass makes her film as shocking and original as possible when blood is splashed.

There isn't much true love in the film, but plenty of bleeding.

"Love Lies Bleeding" opens in the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday, March 15, 2024.