Sarah (Riley Keough) is a twentysomething married woman whose husband Dean (Cary Joji Fukunaga) spends a lot of his time away on business trips. That leaves her in the role of major caretaker of their three-year old daughter Jessie (Jessie Ok Gray).
When Mindy (Jena Malone), a longtime friend shows up, Sarah is happy to have company. These two women spend a day together, and it is clear that there has long been an erotic connection between them, though they have not expressed it.
They take a trip together to eastern Pennsylvania — visiting an amusement park and a rodeo where Mindy flirts with a cowboy. Later, mixing booze and memories of their school days, the two friends have sex. But before either one acknowledges what has happened and where it might lead, Mindy purchases a ticket home.
Three years later, Sarah arrives in Tennessee for Mindy's wedding. She is saddled with the task of picking up the bride's mother Eleanor (Rosanna Arquette), a sad and bitter woman, at the airport. A nervous Best Lady tells some off-color jokes at the rehearsal dinner, and Sarah and Mindy chat in a late-night rendezvous.
Lovesong is the fourth feature by the Korean-American filmmaker So Yong Kim (Treeless Mountain). She draws out two natural and nuanced performances from Riley Keough and Jena Malone as the young women. But the screenplay co-written with Bradley Rust Gray provides us with little insight into the intentions or motivations of the choices Sarah and Mindy make. Equally troubling is the fact that the nature and meaning of their intimate relationship is cut off before it has been allowed to flower. But perhaps, So Yong Kim is reminding us that all love relationships are mysterious, moving beyond our affinity to see all things through the lens of reason.