"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

"Warm Bodies": A zombified Nicholas Hoult meets a girl. With Rob Conddrey cock

 

I'm going to have to stop this "Give me four movies to select from" strategy for Movie Night.  Last night my choices were:

Stand by Me: Same-sex love among homophobic kids vanishes when they grow up and get married. Geez.

Bad Hair: A horror movie about hair care products?

All of Us Strangers: Bereaved gay gay falls in love with a ghost? F*k the Sadness.

Warm Bodies.  Nicholas Hoult, on the icon, was cute, and how could a movie about zombies go wrong?

A zombie (Nicholas) narrates. He can't remember his name, but later his human girlfriend names him R, as in Romeo or ARRR!  His limited cognitive ability means that he doesn't remember what happened, sparing us scenes about the origin of the zombie Apocalypse. 

Left: Nicholas butt.

ARRR spends most of his time plodding around the Montreal-Trudeau airport with the other zombies, hanging out with his friend MMM (Rob Conddry) -- all they do is grunt at each other, but isn't that what living guys do, har har -- and filling his airplane-lair with knicknacks that he scavenged.  

Next door, behind a wall much too high to be even slightly believable, the humans live in a refugee camp and scrounge for food. Except for the evil President, who lives in a palace.

Some of the town teenagers, including the President's daughter Julie -- Juliet, get it? --  and her boyfried Perry -- go beyond the wall to scrounge for medical supplies, and the zombies attack. ARRR sees Julie, and gets the most exaggeratedly corny "love at first sight" look that they ever taught you not to do in acting school.  He notices Perry, and gets rid of the competition by eating him.  

But in this world, when you eat someone, even a tiny piece, you absorb their memories.  ARRR absorbs Perry's memories, all of which involve Julie: falling in love when they are toddlers, their first kiss, their first sexual experience, their declaration of love, and so on ad infinitum. 

Through the entire movie, I thought Perry was being played by Zac Efron.  No, it's someone named Dave Franco, who could be Zac's identical twin.  Seriously, they look exactly alike. 

The other teens just hide until the zombies leave, but ARRR tricks Julie into thinking that he has to save her.  He takes her to his airplane, and they proceed to fall in love.

Eventually Julie wants to return to human society, mainly because there's almost nothing left to eat at the airport, so ARRR tries to sneak her out.  The other zombies want to attack,but he holds her hand and -- get this -- they instantly calm down. "Oh, you're in love.  Why didn't you say so?  Even brain-dead zombies understand that heterosexual romance is the most important thing in the universe.  Go on through."

More heterosexism after the break