Saturday, March 23, 2024

Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

 New Mexico, 1989

Kristine Stewart runs a small gym where she meets Katy O'Brian, a drifter and aspiring body builder. The lesbian Stewart and bisexual O'Brian start a relationship, despite Katy working for Kristine's estranged father Ed Harris, who runs a gun club and is involved in various illegal activities for which the FBI is investigating him. Kristine also has a sister, Jena Malone, a mother of three boys who is in an abusive relationships with husband Dave Franco, who also works for Harris. Anna Baryshinko is a local lesbian with a major crush on Stewart, which makes her suspicious of new arrival O'Brian. The whole situation is a powder keg and at lest one of these people is going to lie bleeding by the end of the movie.

This is rather different, it's a Neo-noir, a melodramatic love story, there is some magical realism. Very strong on sense of time and place, solid tension, good performances all around. Those last 15 minutes or so are designed to be debated, I'm still not quite sure what to make of them. This film is obviously not for everybody, but was a cinematic experience that kept shocking and surprising me, I'm a fan of that. ***1/2

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