Bleeder (Bleeder)

Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn follows up his intense crime drama Pusher with this story of a young couple living on the edges of society. Leo and Louise are in love and share a flat; Leo likes to go drinking with his buddies and watch action movies on the VCR, while Louise prefers quiet nights at home. Louise's brother Louis is a racist thug who imagines himself an underworld kingpin. Lenny, a friend of Leo's, loves movies but is painfully shy around women; when he finally works up the nerve to ask Lea, a waitress at an all-night diner, for a date, he doesn’t show up after all. While Leo seems better adjusted with his friends, that begins to change when Louise informs him that she's going to have a baby. Leo doesn't react well to the news: he becomes remote and begins to turn violent, as a long-held self-loathing finally begins to rise to the surface. (Mark Deming)