Rose Glass revitalises Hollywood noir in her story of a female bodybuilder who falls in love with a mobster’s daughter

There’s clear vision within Love Lies Bleeding, but it all feels a bit shallow. The extremely basic story is the main source of why this work suffers. Complexity is absent from the picture. We’ve seen this type of story many times before.

The filmmakers behind Love Lies Bleeding (director Rose Glass and her co-writer Weronika Tofilska) are, as Glass describes “obviously … both film nerds”. The film has a broad archive of references ranging from the works of influential queer filmmaker John Waters to The Incredible Hulk (2008).