Gym manager Lou falls for Jackie, a bodybuilder who is passing through town en route to a competition in Las Vegas.

Rose Glass’s follow up to her critically acclaimed debut feature ‘Saint Maud’ is ‘Love Lies Bleeding’, a lesbian romantic thriller about the relationship that forms between an introverted gym manager and an ambitious bodybuilder. It is set in the 1980s and it is perfectly pitched tonally, with the right level of grime and sleaziness as we follow these characters who seem to sit somewhere on the edge of society. Starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian, my main feeling coming out of the cinema is that this is the movie ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ should have been.

Lou (Stewart) is a quiet character who keeps herself to herself, living alone with her cat and spending the remainder of her time at the gym she manages on the outskirts of town. She rebuffs the advances of Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), who is infatuated with her, but she finds herself immediately drawn to the physicality and confidence of Jackie (O’Brian), who arrives in town on her way to a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas. The two soon have sex after Lou offers Jackie some steroids to help her prepare for her competition, and they quickly become an item with Jackie moving into Lou’s apartment. Their budding romance is complicated by Lou’s estranged father (Ed Harris) and her skeezy brother in law (Dave Franco), who have both already encountered Jackie prior to her turning up at the gym. This will form the basis for a story that will rapidly get out of control, here beginning the thriller part of the narrative.

I thought this was a cracking little film with good performances and a small town sleazy crime atmosphere that recalled movies such as the Coen’s debut ‘Blood Simple’. Everyone looks the part and between Ed Harris’s long and bald and whatever Dave Franco’s hair is meant to be, it features some of the worst haircuts (intentionally!) I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. I expect views will be mixed for how the story ultimately unfolds but I was along for the ride and really enjoyed ‘Love Lies Bleeding’.

Rating: 4/5

Directed By: Rose Glass

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Dave Franco, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov and Ed Harris

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt19637052/