Love Lies Bleeding follows the story of a budding love story that blossoms between a recluse gym manager and an ambitious body builder, even as they find their lives entangled against crime and murder. The story here is a pulpy concoction of lust and violence which almost makes it like two films unfolding together in the same universe! One is of crime and murder while the other is of a unique love story of lust where two opposites attract in the most literal sense. The screenplay standing at about a 100 minutes is taut while playing out against the backdrop of the late 1980s, a regressive period for the LGBTQIA community. But the writing never really touches upon the shortcomings of the period, instead liberating the characters and validating their actions in what is a heady concoction of love and violence. This section will contain spoilers. 

The drama begins with the introduction of one of the two protagonists, Lou, a reclusive gym trainer who prefers to mind her own business while turning down an offer for a relationship with a local who happens to be attracted to folks of the same gender. On the other end of the spectrum is the other protagonist, a female bodybuilder Jackie(notice how the writers have shed the stereotype here where bodybuilding is often associated with the male gender) is shown to casually have s*x with a guy in the car who later helps her to find a job at a range shooting center, headed by Lou Sr, the father of Lou. Sparks definitely fly when the two worlds meet where the combination of Lou and Jackie is that of fire and ice! 

Even as Jackie gets to know of Lou’s problems including how her brother in law(the guy whom Jackie had s*x with) has been battering his wife, she doesn’t hesitate to go and kill him, even as she indulges in steroids that lead to an acute case of hallucinations and psychosis along the way. Even though Lou is not in agreement of the same, she does the cleanup job rather effectively, something that defines the relationship between Lou and Jackie – one plays the good cop, the other the bad cop. The proceedings are engaging to a point that the events continue to get pulpy and trippy by the minute with multiple threads and characters that would derail the budding romance of Lou and Jackie. In fact at one point, their relationship is indeed strained wherein both head different ways with Lou being stuck in her world, trying to evade the sudden disappearance of her brother-in-law, and Jackie entering the bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas only to hallucinate and eventually get into a fist fight with a contestant while just about evading to get arrested. In the mix is another woman who has proof of Jackie committing a crime, something that she chooses to use against Lou if she doesn’t agree to get into a relationship. So clearly, there is a lot going on in this eccentric drama with traces of dark humour. 

The drama reaches the pinnacle of being trippy in its final act when all the scattered chaos comes together for a final showdown. This includes the resolution of the strained relationship between Lou and Jackie, who join forces against the father of Lou who threatens to jail Jackie for a double homicide. The commentary on the powerful versus the less powerful is a two-fold one here – one that defines the position in the society while the other is that of physicality. And the dichotomy lies in the fact that the one with physicality is associated with a woman who does her bit in pinning her nemesis, thereby crushing the power strata of the society in an expected final act. The only explanation that I could think of is that Jackie continued to hallucinate making herself to be a female hulk of sorts(but she wasn’t actually a gigantic ball of mass as showcased). The final outro of a strangulated murder was symbolic of the relationship of Lou and Jackie, who had seen the highs and lows of their relationship, and were now going super strong with their equation. The screenplay overall is excellent and manages to shed a few inhibitions along the way.