With 2019’s Saint Maud, writer/director Rose Glass made her mark in the realm of religious horror, but it wasn’t just a high caliber boo-movie, it was an artistic statement on isolation, on obsession, and with stunning visuals to make the movie stand out even more. Next up, Glass has set her sights on a similar tale of isolation and obsession, in the realm of film noir.

In 1989, Lou (Kristen Stewart) works as the manager of a small gym in the American Southwest. She spots Jackie (Katy O’Brian) passing through on her way to a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas. Together, the two women form a passionate relationship and are transfixed over one another, but in order to keep the good times rolling, each will be required to commit more desperate acts, including body removal and keeping secrets from Lou’s estranged father, Lou Senior (Ed Harris), a shooting range owner who operates as a cartel gun runner.

Love Lies Bleeding powers along like a runaway locomotive, a genre picture awash in the lurid and sundry language of film noir with a queer twist, until it goes completely off the rails by its conclusion, a pile-up of tones and ideas that’s practically admirable even if it doesn’t come together. Until that final act, what we’re given is a contemporary film noir escapade following desperate and obsessive people get completely well over their heads into danger. Reminiscent of the Wachowski’s Bound, we have a film noir that lets the ladies have all the fun playing into the tropes of the sultry femme fatales, and in this movie, both the lead characters are their own femme fatales and ingenues. Lou is the one who pushes steroid use onto Jackie, who resists at first and wants to go about building her body the old-fashioned way. Lou is also the one with the shady past and connections that come calling back at the worst time. Once fully hooked on her diet of steroids, Jackie becomes increasingly more unpredictable and desperate, leaving Lou to try and clean up their accumulating messes. They both use the other, they both enable the other, and they both project what they want onto the other even after their collective screw-ups. It’s a self-destructive partnership but neither can see through the haze of desire. They see one another as an escape, when really it’s an unraveling of self (though I suppose one could argue “living your best self,” already a subjective claim, could include being a genuine garbage human). In a way, this is a relationship that’s all rampant desire and unfulfilled consumption, and it leaves both parties always wanting more. It’s a bad romance with bad people doing bad things badly, and if that isn’t a tidy summation of most film noir, then I don’t know what is.

For the first hour, I was right onboard with the movie and its grimy atmosphere. The plot has a clear acceleration point, though the first twenty minutes is also given to some cheap “who-slept-with-who-before-they-knew-who” drama that I was instantly ready to put behind. However, once the climactic death hangs over our two lovers, there’s an immediate sense of danger that makes every scene evoke the gnawing desperation of our characters. The screenplay by Maud and Weronika Tofilska has such a deliberate cause-effect construction, and no film noir would be complete without the loose ends the characters would have to fret over. What also helps to elevate the immersion is the electric chemistry between Stewart (Spencer) and O’Brian (The Mandalorian), who worked previously in the world of women’s body building and clearly felt a kinship with this role, and she is also a born movie star. The two women are great together, enough so that the audience might start believing that these two lost souls are actually good for one another. We too might get seduced by the possibility that everything will turn out for the better, when we all know that’s not how film noir goes. I will say there are some gutsy decisions toward the end that will test audiences with their loyalty to our couple, but most felt completely in character even if their lingering impact is for you to reel back, hold your breath, and then heavily sigh.

It would also be impossible to discuss the movie without discussing just how overwhelmingly carnal it can be. I recently reviewed Drive-Away Dolls and noted how horny this lesbian sex comedy road trip was, though to me it felt empty and exploitative. With Love Lies Bleeding, the desire of these two women, and their mutual fulfillment, serves as another drug for them to mainline and then abuse. There is a hanger to the film’s gaze that is effective without feeling overly leering. The body building aspect puts a more natural fixation on lingering on the muscles and curves of human forms, and how Jackie is intending to transform herself into a fantasy version. The sexual content begins to ebb as soon as the murder content ramps up.

Unfortunately, for a movie that gets by on some big artistic chances, not all of them work, and most of the miscues hamper the final thirty minutes. In the final act, Jackie abandons Lou and goes off on her own to her Las Vegas bodybuilding competition, and at that point it’s like she’s in a completely different kind of movie. Hers is a movie about drug addiction and hitting a wall, as she has some very public freakouts and hallucinations. Although from there, Love Lies Bleeding indulges in some peculiar imagery that emphasizes the extreme bulging muscles of Jackie like she was the Hulk. While the movie never presents these flights of fancy as magic realism meant to be taken literally, the sheer goofiness of these moments and imagery can hamper moments, especially during a climactic showdown that feels more like someone’s kinky dream. Ultimately, I don’t think the characters of Lou or Jackie are that interesting. Lou’s criminal past was deserving of more attention far earlier, and Jackie is so narrowly-focused that every scene with her after a certain point is only going to reinforce the same obsessive drive and perspective. Like other genres, film noir works with archetypes, and Love Lies Bleeding isn’t re-inventing the genre, merely giving it a very specific sapphic spin, set amidst the haze of the go-go 1980s.

Rose Glass is a hell of an intriguing filmmaker after two very different movies in two very different genres, both of which have been defined for decades by male filmmakers. This woman is a natural filmmaker with clear vision, and even through the bumps, you know you’re in good hands here with a storyteller that’s going to take you places. The cinematography is fluid and grimy to the point where you may feel the need to take a shower afterwards. Everything seems coated with dirt and sweat. The synth-heavy musical score accommodates rather than overwhelms. The performances are strong throughout, and the screenplay choices, while not always working out, are bold and in-character. Love Lies Bleeding provides just about everything you could want from a lesbian bodybuilder film noir thriller, a movie that recognizes the sizzle of its genre elements and makes grand, scuzzy use. At this point, we should all be paying attention to whatever Glass wants to do next as a filmmaker. It might not be perfect, it might not even work, but it will certainly demand our attention and time.

Nate’s Grade: B