“Love Lies Bleeding” with Michelle Devereaux

How many times have you watched the sweaty lesbian fever dream that is Love Lies Bleeding? As you might be able to guess from this episode, Michelle Devereaux and I have stopped counting. Michelle is a feminist film-philosophy expert who joins me to talk about Rose Glass’s super queer neo noir, the interplay of genre conventions and gender dynamics, and all the fun intertexts and easter eggs that we found in Love Lies Bleeding. Whether you’re into bodybuilding and gender transgression or lesbian romance against all odds, this episode is for you.  

References
Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
Devereaux, Michelle. "Suspicious Minds and Dead Bodies: Queer Romance and Skepticism in Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding." Film Quarterly 78.2 (2024): 24-32.
Devereaux, Michelle. The Stillness of Solitude: Romanticism and Contemporary American Independent Film. Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
Devereaux, Michelle.“‘A lot of people are creative’: Process, Perfectionism and the Everyday Sublime in Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up and First Cow”. Kim Wilkins and Bruce Isaacs, eds. A24: Culture, Aesthetics, Identity. Edinburgh University Press, 2026 (expected).
Devereaux, Michelle.“Inherited Trauma, Postcolonial Scepticism and the Harmony of Voice in Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale”. Film-Philosophy and Australian Cinema. Saige Walton and Matilda Mroz, eds. Edinburgh University Press, 2026 (expected).
Devereaux, Michelle and Lash, Dominic (eds.). Love, Desire and Stanley Cavell. London: Routledge, 2026 (expected).
MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture: www.maifeminism.com
Russian Doll
Sofia Coppola
Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Harvard University Press, 1981.
Cavell, Stanley. Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman. Harvard University Press, 1996.
Comedies of Remarriage
Screwball Comedy
Out and Wild
Sleater-Kinney
Bristol Butch Bar
Lindner, Katharina. Film Bodies: Queer Feminist Encounters with Gender and Sexuality in Cinema. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Bound (1996)
The Incredible Hulk
Kristen Stewart 
Twilight
Pumping Iron II: The Women (1985)
Bev Francis David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) and Lost Highway (1997)
Winkie’s Diner
Lauren Berlant’s epistemic frenzy
Teresa de Lauretis 
[email protected]
Instagram: @michelleldevereaux
Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up (2022)
Michelle Williams
Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio (1996)
Tilda Swinton
Sean Bean  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:
1.      What is Love Lies Bleeding about and why does Michelle suggest it might be more about gender than about sexuality?
2.      How does Michelle describe Lindner’s ‘space of transgender potential’? Can you think of an example for this?
3.      Which genres does Michelle mention to discuss and describe Love Lies Bleeding? How are these genres queered in the film?
4.      What role does the setting play in the film? How might this relate to the ‘space of transgender potential’?
5.      What is your favourite lesbian and/or trans film and why?