LOVE LIES BLEEDING

★★★ 1/2

R, 104 minutes. Through today only at Westbrook. Still playing at Lisbon.

The first time we glimpse Jackie (Katy O’Brian) on screen in “Love Lies Bleeding,” it is not particularly auspicious. But we haven’t yet seen Jackie through the eyes of Lou (Kristen Stewart), and that’s the only gaze that matters in this film. When Lou — the manager at a muscle-head gym — catches sight of Jackie prowling among the weight machines, skin gleaming, her powerfully muscular body reflected in the mirror, almost glowing, it’s like director Rose Glass is letting us in on a lusty little secret. Lou’s desire is so palpable you can smell it, and lucky for her, the feeling is mutual. It’s 1989 in an anonymous Southwestern town, and Jackie is only drifting through on her way to a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas. She’s seemingly dropped from the galaxies like one of the shooting stars that streaks across the vast night sky, and even in the desolate gym parking lot, their chemistry is supernova explosive. But the reality of life in this small, rough town has an insistent, inevitable darkness. There’s Lou’s battered sister Beth (Jena Malone), and her philandering, abusive husband JJ (Dave Franco). There’s the FBI agents who would really like to talk to Lou about her estranged father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), who owns the gun range where Jackie has picked up a few waitressing shifts. There’s Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), a ditzy, nagging townie, who pops up, keening for attention, at the worst times. There are too many connections and coincidences swirling around them, and as Lou and Jackie collide, sexually, there looms a bloodier collision on the horizon: sheer ominousness telegraphed in Lou’s red-drenched flashbacks.