Directed by Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar; You Were Never Really Here) — Screenplay by Enda Walsh, Lynne Ramsay, and Alice Birch.
Based on Ariana Harwicz’s novel of the same name, Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love follows a young mother, Grace (played by Jennifer Lawrence), as she struggles with everything from an identity crisis to postpartum depression and an imbalance within her marriage. The film is mostly set in and around a Montana-based home that the couple inherited from her husband’s late uncle. Robert Pattinson plays Jackson, Grace’s feeble husband, who is oblivious to how his behavior (and his being largely uninvolved in the day-to-day challenges) is impacting her. The film also features supporting performances from Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte as Jackson’s parents, as well as LaKeith Stanfield as a mysterious individual with whom Grace has an ambiguous connection.
Ever since I first saw one of her films, I have been a pretty big fan of Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, so when it was announced that her fifth feature would be released in 2025, it instantly made its way onto my ‘most anticipated films of the year’ list. I didn’t get a chance to watch it until this year, though. I’m glad I finally got the chance to. Because even though I don’t think Die My Love is her best work, it is yet another thought-provoking, character-focused narrative that takes you on an experience. Her latest film is a rough watch, but deliberately so, as it tries to take you into the ‘chaos mind’ of a woman brought closer to the edge by changes in her body, in her home life, and in her relationships, all of which make her feel complicated emotions that she both tries to run away from and feels a desire to attack head-on. It is a film concerned with identity, motherhood, guilt, desire, sexual frustration, and societal pressure.
At the heart of it, we find Jennifer Lawrence. Here she has turned in one of the very best performances of her career. This is an extremely physical and vulnerable performance that, in some ways, feels similar to her work in Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, but which, in other ways, couldn’t be more different. It’s sensational work that captures her character’s internal struggle and external outbursts without ever going overboard. She shares some incredibly intimate, and likely exhausting, scenes with Robert Pattinson, and they both do a good job of speaking to the almost animalistic urges, as well as the outright animalistic behaviors that are sometimes depicted. Indeed, Pattinson makes for a good counter-balance in the film. He doesn’t get a lot to do, other than to play a clueless and exasperating husband, but he does a good job of nailing his character’s distant traits. In a smaller but consequential supporting role, Sissy Spacek is quite good in a role that she plays with concerned expressions that quietly say a lot about her character’s own experiences.
Lynne Ramsay puts the 4:3 aspect ratio presentation to good use, as it both helps to communicate the intimate aspects of the storytelling, but also to work symbolically as one of many ways Ramsay tries to communicate character interiority. Lawrence clearly put a lot of faith in the filmmaker, and Ramsay never lets her down. Together, they do a good job of communicating a fractured mind and a reshaped identity at the same time. In addition to highlighting how the filmmaking style emphasizes character interiority and thematic storytelling, I should also say that the film looks terrific from beginning to end, and the surreal images presented here sit with you.
The elements that maybe didn’t fully work for me on my first viewing mostly concern LaKeith Stanfield’s character. While he is a good actor, whose mere presence enlivens the film in moments, I felt that the deliberately ambiguous, somewhat surreal scenes between him and Grace that blur the line between imagination, symbolism, and reality could’ve used some more clarity, as it didn’t fully land as an aspect of the film. It’s not something I think needs to be cut — that’s not what I’m suggesting — I just think efforts could’ve been made to better illustrate what role his character really has here. Because he is not the only representation or symbol of desire and freedom in the film, and if there isn’t much more to him in this adaptation, then I think his ‘subplot,’ if you can even call it that, could’ve used some work. I also think certain developments can feel repetitive, though that somewhat draining aspect of the narrative is likely deliberate to make you more acutely feel the grueling crises that Grace is experiencing. What makes the more repetitive scenes work is that Jennifer Lawrence keeps you on the edge of your seat with her sometimes unpredictable character.
As I was watching the film, I kept being reminded of other films that dealt with similar experiences, like Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch starring Amy Adams or Jason Reitman’s Tully starring Charlize Theron. For what it’s worth, I quite liked the latter but was underwhelmed by the former. In the case of Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, it is definitely the rawest of the three, as Ramsay’s character-focused, slow-burn psychological drama reaches for pitch-black darkness and stark hopelessness at times. It is a challenging film about altered selfhood in the confusing process of adapting to motherhood and changed relationship dynamics, and Ramsay’s film doesn’t contain easy answers; rather, the film treats the transformative and maddening aspects of postpartum depression with the kind of gravity that it merits, while also featuring performers who are willing and able to take their characters to extremes. I thought it was quite good.
8 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
