Ladylike: 10 thrill rides like ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ that’ll get your blood pumping

Now playing in theaters, Love Lies Bleeding (the second feature from Saint Maud director Rose Glass) follows Lou (Kristen Stewart) a lonely gym manager who falls hard for Jackie (Katy O’Brian) a bodybuilder with big dreams of competing at a competition in Las Vegas. Their tumultuous relationship gets entangled with Lou’s criminal family, which to say the least, complicates things.

Glass swings for the fences with Love Lies Bleeding creating a pulpy cocktail of sex, violence, and steroids. It’s a sapphic film unlike many others because of Glass’s mashup of action and neo-noir with a dash of supernatural thrown in. Plus, with plenty of steamy scenes between Lou and Jackie it’s bound to become a lesbian cult classic. 

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Inspired by Love Lies Bleeding, we’ve put together a similarly mashed up list in honor of Glass’s homage to many genres that felt spiritually bound to Love Lies Bleeding whether that’s from passionate, toxic affairs, being gay and doing crime, or frankly just seeing women kicking ass. 

Scroll down below for 10 sapphic thrill rides that’ll get your blood pumping:

Bottoms (2023)

Speaking of lesbian cult classics, Emma Seligman’s 2023 teen comedy Bottoms is certainly going into that hall of fame. “Ugly, untalented gays” PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) desperately just want to lose their virginities to hot cheerleaders before they go off to college, but they have no idea how to make that happen. So, like any self respecting lesbian would do, they decide to start a fight club under the guise of self-defense when a rival high school begins to threaten to attack students before the big football game of the year. What first ends up as a ploy to f*ck cheerleaders, ends up somewhere sweeter than that. But not too sweet—Bottoms is a bloody, silly love letter to queer dirtbags everywhere. 

Streaming on Amazon Prime.

Atomic Blonde (2017)

“Charlize Theron playing a bisexual MI6 spy” should honestly be the plot of every movie, and thankfully Atomic Blonde more than runs with it. Theron is Lorraine Broughton, a spy, who is sent to Berlin days before the fall of the Berlin Wall to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and—unknown to everyone—her lover, and recover the list of double agents that he had in his possession. Lorraine is told to trust no one, but when Sofia Boutella’s French agent Delphine Lasalle shows up, their chemistry is undeniable. Watching Theron constantly go toe-to-toe and fist-to-fist with a myriad of lesser men is thrilling enough… then putting her with Boutella takes it to another sapphic level. Bonus points for director David Leitch really leaning into the bisexual lighting. 

Available to rent on most digital VOD platforms.

D.E.B.S. (2004)

Angela Robinson’s D.E.B.S. was truly ahead of its time. A secret test hidden in the SAT allows a paramilitary academy known as D.E.B.S.—which stands for Discipline, Energy, Beauty, Strength—to see which teen girls might have an aptitude for espionage, and then swiftly recruits them. Complete with totally hot school girl fits, Amy (Sara Foster), Dominique (Devon Aoki), Max (Meagan Good) and Janet (Jill Ritchie) are tasked with tailing Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster), an infamous criminal—for both her crimes and her good looks. When Amy and Lucy strike up an understanding that starts to become more, their whole mission is threatened. A budding romance between a spy and a criminal, plus lesbian legend Holland Taylor *playing Ms. Petrie who runs the D.E.B.S. academy) and you’ve got a classic right there. 

(Robinson also directed 2017’s Professor Marston & The Wonder Women about the creator of Wonder Woman’s throuple with his wife, starring Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, and Bella Heathcote. Trust us, it’s very hot.) 

Available to rent on most digital VOD platforms.

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Bound (1996)

Truthfully, what more is there to add to say about Bound that hasn’t been said already? Directed and written by The Wachowski Sisters, Bound is a lesbian noir classic. Violet (Jennifer Tilly) is desperate to leave her Mafia boyfriend behind. A chance encounter with soft butch Corky (Gina Gershon), an ex-con who is working in the apartment building that Violet lives in with her boyfriend, leads to a torrid affair (and some of the hottest cinematic scenes ever committed to screen) with the pair scheming to steal $2 million of Mafia money. It’s a classic for a reason. 

Available to stream on Amazon Prime and Roku.

Catfight (2016)

Maybe it’s just us, but who doesn’t want to see Sandra Oh and the late, great Anne Heche brawl? Ashley (Heche) a struggling artist, and Veronica (Oh), an alcoholic housewife, have a chance run in at a party for Veronica’s husband where Ashley is working as a caterer. The two recognize one another from college, snipping at one another. What ensues is a down and out brawl in the stairwell, putting Veronica into a coma for two years. When she’s out, she is ready to seek revenge on Ashley. The darkly funny examination of women’s rage doesn’t shy away from the blood—or the societal expectations that may lead them there. 

Available to stream on Netflix.

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Set It Off (1996)

Another classic for a reason, the crime drama follows Frankie (Vivica A. Fox) who begins working at a janitorial service with her friends after being fired from her previous job as a bank teller. Frankie and co. (which include Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Kimberly Elise—a murderer’s row of talent) lament the difficulties they are each facing in their lives, much of which is financial. After an initial kernel of a suggestion of robbing banks from Frankie, the rest of the group isn’t biting—but when they do, it sets off a chain reaction including a dogged detective determined to find out who the group is doing the robbing. Unrelentingly tense and constantly thrilling, Set It Off was a major precursor of the “be gay, do crime” subgenre.

Available to rent on Amazon Prime and Apple.

Charlie’s Angels (2019)

When it was released in 2019, Elizabeth Banks’ reimagining of Charlie’s Angels didn’t get off easy at the time. Of course it’s hard to follow the Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, Drew Barrymore films of the early aughts, and perhaps it’s a bit too heavy on the “girl power” aspect of it all. But it has Kristen Stewart as the gayest angel ever. Sabina (Stewart) and Jane (Ella Balinska) end up recruiting Elena (Naomi Scott), an engineer and inventor of Calisto, a sustainable energy source that ends up in the wrong hands, in order to find out who now has it. Sure, it’s a bit light on plot but it’s heavy on wigs, women beating up dudes, Stewart’s bleach blonde pixie circa the era, and a lot of fun. 

Available to stream on Hulu, Roku, and Amazon Prime.

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Mulholland Drive (2001)

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is a knotty exploration of identity, the slick underbelly of Hollywood, and at its center the love story between two women that goes utterly awry. Betty (Naomi Watts), an aspiring actress, ends up meeting and befriending a woman (Laura Harring) who has amnesia following a car accident. Betty puts on her detective’s cap to help the woman unearth who she actually is and, in the process, they fall for one another. Of course, nothing is so simple with Lynch who twists and turns and circumvents the narrative—leading to strange and scary, but also beautiful places. With a captivating performance from Watts—who frankly should have won an Oscar—Lynch tells both a lesbian fantasy and nightmare all at the same time. 

Available to rent on most digital VOD platforms.

The Handmaiden (2016)

Based on Sarah Waters’ 2002 novel Fingersmith, Park-Chan Wook delivered an instant sapphic favorite with The Handmaiden. An orphaned pickpocket, Sook-Hee (Kim Tae-ri), is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress Lady Hideko (Kim Min–hee). Sook-Hee is involved in a plot to defraud Lady Hideko by a conman Count Fujiwara who plans to marry her and then commit her to an asylum. What complicates things—and what do one expects—is when Lady Hideko falls for Sook-Hee. Another addition to the “be gay, do crimes” canon, The Handmaiden is thrilling, sumptuous, and incredibly sexy. 

Available to stream on Amazon Prime.

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Gemini (2017)

Putting Zoe Kravitz, Lola Kirke, and Greta Lee in a movie together is incredibly upsetting—in a good way. Add John Cho into the mix and it might just be the fire emoji. Jill (Kirke) is the longtime assistant and friend of movie star Heather Anderson (Kravitz), but when Jill discovers Heather murdered, she must solve the crime as Detective Ahn (Cho) remains on her tail, thinking she’s the suspect. It’s a fun, twisty LA noir with plenty of LA lifestyle porn. Light spoiler alert: Greta Lee plays Zoe Kravitz’s girlfriend,and that’s gotta be enough to watch! 

Available to stream on Roku and Amazon Prime