“Love Lies Bleeding” is a gay, gritty neo-noir bound by its glistening cinematography and a wild love affair that bleeds high stakes, steroids and a seductive synth soundtrack.

However, for all the sex, it feels a little anti-climactic. 

Directed by Rose Glass and produced by A24, this lurid crime thriller takes place in 1989 New Mexico and chronicles gruff gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) and enigmatic homeless bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian) as they unspool Lou’s wicked family history and their longing to escape the small desert town. 

The queer film industry is in a renaissance; the lesbian French drama “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (2019) won the Cannes Film Festival award for best screenplay, and the Black gay A24-produced “Moonlight” (2016) famously won best picture at the Oscars. 

Now, “Love Lies Bleeding” has entered the lesbian crime movie scene among “Bottoms” (2023) and this year’s “Drive-Away Dolls.”

It stations itself firmly as a titillating thriller, thanks to its engaging visuals, often coated in a glowing red that symbolizes impending violence, and the dynamic chemistry between Stewart and O’Brian.

When Jackie enters the gym Lou works at, Lou becomes smitten in a fraction of a second.

The soundtrack quickens, sweat drips and hearts race; romance and violence are at the forefront, as the title duly suggests.

O’Brian embodies Jackie with a certain grace, most likely informed by her background as a gay bodybuilder.

She is quietly electrifying and radiates an addictive confidence despite her untraditional physique.

The women share a stare and a cigarette; before they can connect beyond physical touch, their attraction spreads like wildfire and exposes an uncomfortable coincidence: upon arriving in town, Jackie sleeps with JJ (Dave Franco), Lou’s brother-in-law, to get a job at the shooting range Lou’s dad runs.

What’s the big deal? JJ is a serial abuser to Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone), and Lou Sr. (Ed Harris) has been getting away with murder for years.

Lou also naively introduces Jackie to steroids, thinking it will strengthen her chance of accomplishing her dreams of winning a national bodybuilding competition in Vegas, but it quite literally puts her in a “roid rage,” stirring the Lou family pot of awful, long-lost deeds.

The camera often embraces Jackie’s changing physique and routinely pans in on her pulsating muscles and veins as the steroids supernaturally change her body, hinting at magical realism.

Stewart does the shake and stutter that everyone made fun of her for in the “Twilight” franchise, but it only seems right for Lou, an antsy smoker attempting to quit, plagued by a criminal past.

Her character’s swagger — the scrappy mullet, eye bags and a cigarette regularly dangling from her lips — suits Stewart.

She moved audiences with her performance as a perturbed Princess Diana in “Spencer” (2021), and now she’s challenging traditionally masculine narratives by playing an antisocial lesbian.

One can’t help but wonder if Stewart’s casting is what carries this pulpy love story, but it takes two to tango — O’Brian pulls her weight, even when the premise is better than the plot.

Considering the movie is so focused on identifying how a concealed past tortures the present, “the past” is absent.

Instead, it alludes to it with flashes of Lou Sr. menacingly aiming his gun, covered by a red filter.

Jackie’s destitute origins and motivation behind bodybuilding are blurred, leaving viewers hungry for more to chew.

However, maybe making sense of the movie’s senseless violence would only dim its mystique.

Let’s just say despite a porous plot, “Love Lies Bleeding” will go down as a subversive gay flick aimed at making blood and love blend seamlessly and sensually.

“Love Lies Bleeding” released March 8 and is available in theaters.