The word for Rose Glass (Saint Maud) and Weronika Tofilska’s Love Lies Bleeding is “precise.” From the individual and combined performances of leads Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian (whose turn as a cunning Imperial agent was a bright spot in the often dreary third season of The Mandalorian) to DP Ben Fordesman’s chameleonic camera work and hair department lead Megan Daum’s wide-ranging design work, everyone on the project knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to get it done. The result is a bracing, clear-eyed noir thriller, and a fraught, swoon-worthy romance. It’s my favorite movie of 2024 so far.

It’s the late 1980s. The reserved and insightful Lou (Stewart) manages a grimy bodybuilding gym in a sunbleached western suburb. She does not talk to her father, the cruel, cunning crime lord Lou Sr. (Ed Harris). She loves her sister, fraying housewife Beth (Jena Malone), and hates that she will not leave her loathsome slimeball husband JJ (Dave Franco). The closest person Lou has to a romantic partner is the aggressively cheerful Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), and their on-off something or other boils down to, in Bart Simpson’s words, “geographical convenience, really.” Enter Jackie (O’Brian), a drifting bodybuilder aiming for a Las Vegas contest where victory can leap passion into profession. The sparks are immediate.

Jackie’s drive lights a fire in Lou, and Lou’s methodical care grounds Jackie. Simultaneously, Lou’s desire to help Jackie achieve her dream and Jackie’s desire to make Lou happy lead them to make bad calls—the sort of bad calls that lead to worse calls that lead to blood. And neither JJ’s venality nor Lou Sr.’s mercilessness should be discounted.

Stewart and O’Brian build Lou and Jackie on different types of loneliness. Before meeting Jackie, Stewart’s Lou deliberately and physically distances herself from everyone but Malone’s Beth. In some cases, this is pragmatic—the gym’s members are strictly clients, and Stewart uses a barrier (her desk) to enforce that separation. In others, it’s personal. While Lou and Daisy have something, Lou also does not particularly like Daisy as a person. Baryshnikov regularly pushes into Stewart’s space, underlining Daisy’s apparent obliviousness—and when Stewart does lower her guard, it’s out of exasperation and exhaustion more than attraction. Harris’ Lou Sr. isn’t just ruthless and amoral—he’s his daughter’s father. When Lou has no choice but to interact with him, their body language mirrors each other—waiting, watchful, and acutely aware of how much the other is capable of. As Stewart plays her, Lou is an introvert who is not lonely by choice, even as she regularly interacts with a host of folks.

O’Brian, by contrast, focuses on Jackie’s isolation in the wider world. She doesn’t just dive into bodybuilding because it’s a passion that requires a deep commitment but because it’s something concrete, something she can count on to continue beyond a transaction. Before meeting Lou, Jackie is her own and only companion. Her passion and discipline sustain her, but waking up next to an overpass will always be grinding and isolating. Where Stewart works with physical barriers, O’Brian and DP Fordesman juxtapose Jackie’s physical confidence with the vast flatness of Western suburbia—a liminal space capable of swallowing people whole.

Once Lou and Jackie meet and fall for each other, Stewart and O’Brian use their differing types of loneliness as a springboard to build the specifics of their relationship. Romantically and sexually, they construct care and attraction from Lou and Jackie’s excitement at their chemistry, similarities, and differences. They then use that care and attraction to present the leads in a new context—happy, relaxed, and at ease—in ways that neither opens the film.

These high points, in turn, create space for Stewart and O’Brian to build up Lou and Jackie’s vicious sides as Love Lies Bleeding continues. Stewart plays Lou as someone who’s woken up from a long time in the grey via love; her awareness of what life with Jackie can be compels her to resurrect her spin on the family’s calculating ruthlessness. O’Brian plays Jackie as someone whose North Star dream has only gotten brighter via love; her awareness of what life can be with Lou pushes her to bring strength and wrath to bear on anyone or anything that would endanger what they’re building.

Stewart and O’Brian’s turns as Lou and Jackie command attention as both solo performances and a combined romantic performance. Both do fine work across the many modes Love Lies Bleeding calls on them to play. Glass, Tofilska, and the picture’s greater company match them step for step and rep for rep. Among the ensemble (an ace team all around), Harris echoes Stewart’s guarded physicality while cutting away the warmth she brings to her scenes with O’Brian and Baryshnikov’s peeling back her outward sunniness stand out. Design-wise, set designer Donavin Merritt, set decoration coordinator Arianne Battersby, and hair department lead Daum craft spaces and looks that seed the bleakness against which the world Lou and Jackie build becomes all the more vibrant (In particular, Harris’ hair is well and truly astonishing. Even Dune Part Two‘s House Harkonnen cannot match its wicked vibes).

And Glass and Tofilska? In his seminal 1972 essay “Notes on Film Noir,” Paul Schrader argues that 1: noir is defined by “tone and mood” and 2: that the “overriding noir theme” is “a passion for the past and present, but also a fear of the future.” As directed by Glass and written by her and Tofilska, Love Lies Bleeding is an impeccably crafted example of modern noir. From their juxtaposition of Lou and Jackie’s genuine if fraught love with Beth and JJ’s toxic morass of marriage to the ensemble’s mounting desperation in Love Lies Bleeding‘s later acts, Glass and Tofilska have built a moving, romantic, steamy, thrilling film. And like Schrader’s modern classic First Reformed, Glass and Tofilska close with a big, big swing—a jump in style and form that is both a radical departure from what’s come before and, for my money, clicks as a conclusion. I do not know if it will work for everyone, but it’s undeniably bold—a moment worth celebrating in a film worth celebrating.

Love Lies Bleeding is now playing in select theaters and will pump up its release on Friday, March 15th.

Love Lies Bleeding Trailer: