Film

Lovesong

Name: Lovesong
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 2017
Cast: Riley Keough, Jena Malone, Jessie Ok Gray, Sky Ok Gray, Brooklyn Decker

A spare, tender film about the erotic and emotional pull between two women across years and circumstance. It moves quietly through desire, abandonment, and the ways we reach for people we cannot have. Slow, sensual, and utterly uninterested in easy answers—for viewers who want intimacy without resolution.

TMDb rating

2.9

If you liked this

Carol2015

A masterclass in restrained longing between two women across class and era. Todd Haynes builds desire through glances and small touches, asking what we sacrifice for love we cannot claim. Essential.

But The pacing is deliberate to the point of glacial. If you need plot momentum or clear emotional beats, you'll feel the slowness acutely.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire2019

A painter and her subject fall into intimacy during a single summer. It's sensual and urgent, exploring how we're transformed by being truly seen. Visually exquisite and emotionally raw.

But Heavy on mood and visual language, light on dialogue. The ending may feel incomplete if you're looking for closure or conventional narrative shape.

Certain Women2016

Kelly Reichardt's meditation on female solitude and the small aches of connection. Three interlocking stories that move like water, finding beauty in the ordinary and the unspoken. Genuinely moving.

But Nothing much happens. If you need conflict, plot twists, or even much dialogue, this will feel like punishment rather than cinema.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Lovesong

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Hunger2008

Both films compress intense feeling into minimal narrative. Neither explains or justifies desire—they simply let it exist in the spaces between people, quietly devastating.

Steve McQueen's debut is about Bobby Sands' hunger strike, but it's structured around two men in a cell—the intimacy, the silences, the unbridgeable distance between them. It finds eroticism in deprivation and protest.

But It's extremely difficult to watch. Graphic bodily deterioration, brutality, and a long static take of a man's hand that asks more patience than most audiences have.

The Last Seduction1994

Linda Fiorentino is electric as a woman who seduces and manipulates her way across America. Sharp, funny, and utterly unrepentant about female desire as something dangerous and thrilling.

But It's a thriller first, not a character study. The tone and pacing are quicker and meaner than Lovesong's tenderness allows.

Mulholland Drive2001

Two women in Los Angeles, desire and disillusionment. Naomi Watts and Laura Harring have an intimacy that feels real before the film fractures into nightmare. Lynch at his most achingly human.

But It's deliberately constructed to confuse and frustrate you about what's real. Some people find that brilliant; others find it exhausting.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer2017

Yorgos Lanthimos builds a world of careful surfaces that hide terrible things. The precision of his direction and the performances' flatness create genuine dread. Unsettling and unforgettable.

But It's austere, cold, and deeply unpleasant. The distance Lanthimos maintains from his characters may feel like cruelty rather than insight.

The American Friend1977

Wim Wenders' film about homoeroticism coded into crime and conspiracy. It's beautiful and strange, with an undercurrent of desire that the plot barely acknowledges but the camera never stops seeing.

But It's from 1977, made in Germany, and moves at its own unhurried pace. The thriller elements are secondary to mood and subtext.

Lost River2015

Ryan Gosling's directorial debut is a fever dream about a decaying American town. Haunting, visually stunning, and deeply strange. It trusts your patience and rewards it.

But The narrative is deliberately opaque and dreamlike. If you need clarity or straightforward storytelling, you'll be frustrated.

First Reformed2018

Paul Schrader's portrait of a man in spiritual crisis. Ethan Hawke is magnificent as a minister wrestling with faith, ecology, and his own emptiness. Angry, tender, and necessary.

But It's bleak and relentlessly internal. The spiritual questions it poses have no comfortable answers, and the film offers no escape.

Stranger by the Lake2013

Both understand that desire and danger are often inseparable, and that we return to people and places knowing they will hurt us. Both are shot with an almost anthropological distance that makes the intimacy more unbearable.

Alain Guiraudie's film about desire at a cruising lake is hypnotic and erotic without being explicit. A man watches, falls into attraction, suspects danger. It's about the pull between knowing better and wanting anyway.

But Subtitled French film about gay men negotiating desire and risk. The pacing is deliberately slow, and the ending is bleak.

The Hidden Fortress1958

Like Lovesong, it finds the deepest relationship in the film between two people the narrative frames as secondary. Both trust that the camera can see what the characters will not say, and that what we cannot name is often what matters most.

Kurosawa's adventure film is often read as a samurai epic, but at its heart are two men whose partnership is the emotional center—bickering, loyal, bound by something neither articulates. The film is alive with their connection.

But It's a 1958 Japanese film in black and white. The action is glorious but the pacing belongs to its era, not to modern habits.