Steroids. Gun play. Inferno. Hot lesbian action. It’s hard to dislike this film by the window dressing. This is a Joe Bob Briggs special if I’ve ever seen one. And it kills me that it isn’t better. But it isn’t. I found it difficult to sympathize with any character in the film strictly because of the choices they made. Do you have any idea how difficult it is NOT to sympathize with someone who deliberately punishes a bully? Bullies are my least favorite category of people … as if you didn’t know already.
Yet here we are.
Hmmm … how shall I put this? Suppose you wish to dispose of a body, discretely. You know this great out of the way hole in the ground. You even know the body won’t be found because there are other bodies down there that haven’t been found. Sure, you could just shove the body over the lip and into the chasm; it might be years before it is found again. But why do that when you can dump it into the back of a car, push the car into the abyss, and then blow the whole thing up and leave it to smoke indefinitely, thus assuring there will be random eye-witnesses well into the next day? :SMH:
It all started with a lesbian crush. Lou (Kristen Stewart) gets the shit jobs at the local workout place … in both a metaphorical and a literal sense. We’re introduced to her cleaning out a toilet in their one-star facility.
Musclehead Jackie (Katy O’Brien) aspires to be a body building champion. She has a Las Vegas competition coming up. It is worth note here that as an actor, Katy O’Brien makes a good body builder, and as a body-builder, Katy O’Brien makes a good actor. In other words, I don’t think she has a real chance in Vegas, but don’t tell the film that. We meet her having sex in the back of Dave Franco’s Camaro. Jackie wants a job and Franco has a connection.
Lou sees Jackie at the gym and, well, fireworks. It’s only a matter of time before muff-diving and steroid swapping. Can I say that? Do people still say “steroids” in polite company? Seriously, I apologize for the language, but this is an R-rated film with hot lesbianism. If “muff-diving” is a turn-off, I have no idea how you got this far in the review in the first place.
And now some background: Lou’s father, Ed Harris, is the local mafioso don, however donnish one can be for living in an end-of-nowhere town of maybe 1,000 people max. He owns the local firing range where Dave Franco and now Jackie are employed. Dave Franco is married to Lou’s sister. And when he’s not cheating on her, he’s beating her to 
a bloody pulp. What would you do if your brother-in-law were a wife-beater?
Ok, so here’s how the film begins, and while I haven’t been presented with any characters I like, I can kinda get behind Lou – she has a terrible job, a criminal for a father, a monster for a brother-in-law, and lesbianism outside big cities doesn’t tend to play well in the United States. I can get behind lust and craving and naked desire. But steroids were a bad idea in 1989. We knew it then. We know it now. And the choices didn’t get any better after that.
Bad choices are bad choices. They don’t get a break because they’re presented in LGTBQ+ lust mode. In retrospect, the film that critiques Love Lies Bleeding came out a month earlier. Drive Away Dolls covers similar material with a superior presentation in the round. I can get behind the force that created Love Lies Bleeding, but I feel the screenplay is a cheat; it was written for fantasy and titillation, yet presented just enough of reality so that the viewer knows the fantasy ends exactly when the picture ends. And if I’m being honest – the fantasy wasn’t that great to begin with.
There was once a lesbian named Lou
Whose life could use an improvement or two
Then she met Jackie
And everything went wacky
But at least she got a brand new milieu
Rated R, 104 Minutes
Director: Rose Glass (That was my order when we went out drinks last week)
Writer: Rose Glass, Weronika Tofilska
Genre: Hot lesbianism … and a film
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Does hot lesbianism mean more to you than bonkers decision-making? Have I got a film for you!
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “For the love of Gloria Steinem, will somebody please make a good choice?!”
