Welcome to Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene, a series by Drew Burnett Gregory and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about queer sex scenes in film. Sometimes, we’ll tap writers we love to contribute to the series. This week, Alissa Nutting — author of Tampa and Made for Love and executive producer of the Made for Love adaptation on Max — hops in to write about the best sex scene from Love Lies Bleeding, which might not be the scene you expect.
In a Venn diagram between “noir film” and “sun/moon Double Cancer signs” (that’s me!), the overlap is clear: We both HOTLY fetishize quasi-parasitic enmeshment!
If you can’t relate and don’t get wet thinking about your crush forwarding their mail to your apartment, congratulations…but how do you make yourself come???? All this to say, since nothing turns me on more than seeing two women cohabitate within 12 hours of meeting, Love Lies Bleeding had my attention from the jump.
The first time Lou and Jackie are intimate, we learn that in this film, sex scenes end with a hard cut to reality, which speaks to theme. Lou and Jackie are both in tough situations in a tough town, and momentary reprieves from its cruelties feel limited. Thus, one moment Lou’s head is writhing between Jackie’s legs…the next, Lou is flipping eggs in a bathrobe with a cigarette dangling from her mouth, wearing a blank expression that calls to mind the “party’s over” aura of Patty & Selma from The Simpsons.
In their next big sex scene, Lou utters an unforgettable line of dialogue that seems to serve as a throughline for the entire movie: “I want to stretch you.” This scene is followed by a post-coital mutual stare in bed where they both say “I love you.” But then we hard cut to the next morning, when they wake up to a ringing phone.
This, of course, immediately sent my anxious attachment spiraling: Did that mean the bedroom scene where they just said “I love you” was only a dream? Both their characters are understandably self-protective. Was it more realistic that this exchange was a somnolent fantasy?
Yes, this is perhaps a paranoid reading. And yes, when I go to a movie, I should buy a separate ticket for my outsized sense of hypervigilance toward rejection that insists on coming with me. I don’t, though. Because it always sits on my lap!
But the scene I want to talk about happens at Jackie’s bodybuilding competition. Right before she goes out on stage, she looks over and sees a vision of Lou. “Go get it,” Lou supportively says to her, and Jackie nods with a renewed sense of confidence that makes me tear up every time. In moments like these, when Jackie’s muscles seem to bend the very fabric of reality, Lou and Jackie get to support each other in ways that reach beyond their circumstances.
This touching moment, I shall now argue, is the start of perhaps the greatest lesbian throat-sex scene of all time. And for me, it was also the most emotionally evocative sex scene of the movie.
When Lou says “Go get it,” this dialogue is foreplay. Lou doesn’t launch straight into an act of erotic regurgitation. She whispers a sweet nothing first! Why? Because that’s what ROMANCE is!!! “Go get it” is Lou emotionally stretching Jackie, encouraging her to face all her fears, step out on stage, and actualize her potential. But Lou’s about to physically stretch Jackie, too.
After Lou speaks these words, she disappears…or so it seems. But it’s actually a rabbit into the hat-style magic trick of fully submersible penetration. Because as Jackie goes out on stage, she’s carrying Lou inside of her. Figuratively, as inspiration. But also, on a certain level, literally.
We can’t see the sex, or Lou, at this point, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. For illustrative purposes, maybe it helps to imagine Lou curled up inside Jackie’s body like…I don’t know, a giant fist? One that Jackie then flexes her muscles around in a variety of poses? Flexing and squeezing and flexing and squeezing…picture what you must! The point is, Jackie is moving, with Lou inside her, building to the surprise climax—
BUT FIRST! Very suddenly, the entire landscape shifts and Jackie comes face-to-face with Lou’s dead brother-in-law. Now, surely, I’m not delulu enough to argue that seeing a dead body and its inferno-esque dump site is part of a sex scene, right?
WRONG!!!
While these are admittedly horrifying images, here is what I’m nevertheless submitting as their still-part-of-a-sex-scene-qualification paperwork:
Toxic romantic gestures are a bedrock of the noir genre. And probably of any character taking steroids seemingly laced with a mystical Tinkerbell dust (if Neverland were an offshoot of both the Marvel Universe and Die Hard franchise). Yes, Jackie committed a gruesome murder. But in her twisted logic, she was doing it for Lou. Righting a wrong, even. She did it as a gift — an offering.
You know what else will kill something for you as a gift? A cat! And what’s another name for cat? Pussy! And what is pussy also a nickname for? See how quickly we can point this back to sex? Sure, it’s a stretch, but as we’ve established, stretching is the whole point!
And guess what else Jackie now sees, besides the man she killed? A red, simmering gash in the earth! It looks like a Georgia O’Keefe rendition of a Portrait of a Car on Fire (in a gorge). Between this molten slit and the euphemistically feline corpse offering, it seems OK to say this scene is just like Maude Lebowski’s art: highly vaginal.
If you’re tempted to stop and poke holes (ahem?) in this argument, I’m sorry but there’s simply no time: The sex scene is about to peak! Jackie’s chest stretches, and voila, a long coil slides out of her mouth that turns out to be Lou!
Why is it sex? Why isn’t it? We’ve got spitting, gagging, choking noises, fluids. Lou’s placental covering looks eerily like a body condom; Lou draws in air as though she has just finished an exxxtreme act of breath play…if it quacks like a duck, can’t we call it a duck???? I vote sex!
And then, the aftercare: “Baby,” Lou says gently, “I told you to stay put.”
So, let’s review, shall we? A dom-ish top lays down a rule she knows will be impossibly hard to follow, it inevitably gets broken, then throat stuff happens. Sounds like sex to me!
And when it’s over, as with the film’s previous Lou and Jackie sex scenes, we hard-cut straight back to reality: Lou isn’t really there, and Jackie has gotten sick on stage.
Prior to this (SEX) scene (it’s sex!), I already liked the film. But this scene is when I decided I loved it. Once I’d seen all of Lou come out of Jackie like a reverse Goya painting (if Saturn was a super-hot female bodybuilder in a bikini emitting life instead of taking it) I, too, was all in. This (sex) scene assured me that even amidst all the violence and danger, love would magically stretch what was possible for both characters.
Absolutely love this.