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