RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: "Love Lies Bleeding": Lesbian neo-noir in the New Mexico desert, with some musclemen and bonus dicks

Friday's Movie Night movie was Love Lies Bleeding (2024), about a lesbian couple involved with bodybuilding, gun-running, and murder. I was not happy with the choice, thinking that it would be constant breasts and other body parts, but the sex scenes are actually quite subdued: a flash of breast in the first, fully clothed in the second. And there are two scenes with beefcake.

The story: In a New Mexico desert community that seems to be all desert, no community, Lou runs a run-down gym, then goes home to her horrible apartment to feed her cat and be depressed.

Meanwhile, homeless bodybuilder Jackie -- wait, how can you work out six hours a day and eat 5,000 calories while homeless? -- has sex with JJ (Dave Franco) to score a job as a waitress at main local business, a shooting range which is also a front for a drug-and-gun smuggling operation.

Left: Dave Franco's butt

Depressed Lou visits her relatives so she can be a tad less depressed. Surprise: JJ is her brother! He was cheating on his wife earlier! Casting stupidity: Lou and JJ look exactly alike, but he is actually her brother in law, and the woman playing her sister looks absolutely nothing like her.

Next, Bodybuilder Jackie wanders into Depressed Lou's gym. They bond over clobbering some sexist jerks played by Keith Jardin, left, and Jerry G. Angelo, below. Lou has a side gig selling illegal steroids to gym members; she gives Jackie some for free because, you know, she's cute. Soon they're kissing, then sexing, and then Lou invites this random hookup to move in. Not smart, girlfriend.

Although this is small-town New Mexico in 1989, the lesbian couple is accepted with utter nonchalance. I imagine if it was two guys, the townsfolk would horrified.

The only problem: Depressed Lou's employee, the ditzy comic-relief Daisy, has a crush on her, and is jealous of this new person in her life. This will become important later.

Oh, wait, I forgot the other problem: when Depressed Lou brings Bodybuilder Jackie to meet the family, and it comes out that Jackie had sex with her brother-in-law JJ, she recoils in disgust. First, she doesn't believe that "bisexual" is a thing; either you like girls, or you like boys. Second, why JJ? He's an abusive jerk. Lou often wants to kill him. Uh-oh, don't tell your bodybuilder-girlfriend with a sketchy past that you want to kill someone.

More after the break

Another big reveal: Bodybuilder Jackie's boss at the shooting range is Ed Harris, looking like Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, bald on top with long hair in the back, the main drugs-and-guns smuggling guy. And he's Depressed Lou's Dad!

Lou never visits his huge mansion in the hills because she is too traumatized by her past, like when she helped Dad kill Roger Ivens, left, by throwing him into the gorge.

Things start to fall apart when Abusive JJ puts his wife, Lou's sister, in the hospital with her face bashed in. Lou becomes very angry and wishes that she could kill JJ.

So, what's your bodybuilder girlfriend with the sketchy past supposed to think? "I can score some points by going over to the guy's house and bashing his face in!"

Let the spiraling begin, with cover-ups, double-crosses, plot twists, and Bodybuilder Jackie going to the big competition in Las Vegas after all. But she starts hallucinating, attacks one of the other competitors, and....

Beefcake: The opening scene at the gym and the bodybuilding competition.

Gay Characters: No, but there are a lot of lesbians in the small town.