I wad dubious about this at first. It felt like the age-old formula of young lovers committing crimes and rebelling against the world, except with a lesbian couple. But then it starts ramping up the intensity and never stops even as it enters surreal territory. Right then I was hooked and understood that this was something special. It’s kind of insane that a formula like bodybuilding noir could ever work but it does. It’s fitting then that it was made the same director who made Saint Maud as it shares the same kind of insane intensity.

It’s the 1980s in a small town in New Mexico and a young woman Lou runs the local gym. It is a thankless job, unclogging toilets and wiping down sweat in the large space with no air-conditioning but to Lou it seems to be a familiar routine. One day her attention is caught by Jackie, an aspiring female bodybuilder who is travelling through town. She has just obtained a job at a gun range run by Lou’s father Lou Sr. by sleeping with her brother-in-law JJ. When Jackie punches a man harassing her, Lou intervenes and they grow close, becoming lovers as Lou is lesbian and Jackie is bisexual. Lou offers her the performance steroids that are readily available and though Jackie is hesitant at first, soon starts using it in increasing doses. Over the following days, Jackie gets to know more of the dynamics of Lou’s family. JJ is violently abusive towards his wife Beth, Lou’s sister, but Beth seems so in love with him that she would never dream of leaving him. One day Beth is beaten so badly that she has to be hospitalized. The distraught Lou confesses at wanting to kill JJ. Pumped pull of steroids and in love with Lou, Jackie goes to JJ’s house and brutally beats him until his jaw pops off, killing him in a gruesome fashion.

As I noted, it’s a familiar formula and changing the couple to a lesbian one doesn’t make that much of a difference. Yet I love the strong 1980s vibes: the old-style gym, the music, roid rage, mullet hairstyles, garish mansions and muscle cars. The aesthetics work great and it’s oddly nostalgic. The nonstop escalation of the stakes, murders, covering tracks, revelations that Lou Sr. is the head of a criminal empire and runs the whole town, that Lou herself is no innocent maiden but has been his loyal sidekick for years, break it out of the formula. It’s visceral, bloodily violent, sexy and intense. I suppose it’s the mark of an interesting director to be able to come up with an oddball combination like this. I’m not sure that the fact that it’s about a lesbian couple even matters that much. It’s another kind of power fantasy and why not?

I’m also stoked how this is a love story in the sense that it’s only love if it hurts. It’s there in the way Beth always crawls after her husband no matter how badly he beats her up. It’s there in how both Lou and Jackie are willing to kill for each other and hide the bodies afterwards. Maybe it’s even there in the hints of how Lou and her father have let each other get away with far worse things for so long. So in a very literal way, bleeding is the ultimate proof of love. It’s simultaneously repulsive and seductive, which is exactly what I’d expect from the person who made Saint Maud.