DIE MY LOVE

THREE STARS Grace's world is buckling, and neither her child, husband or mother-in-law are helping.

DRAMA US English #DIEMYLOVE Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson

It’s fair to say that Lynne Ramsay has never been interested in making films that are easy to digest. She makes you work hard and DIE MY LOVE is one of those films. Adapted from Ariana Harwicz’s novel about a woman unravelling at the intersection of motherhood, rural isolation and unresolved grief, Ramsay’s latest maintains her reputation for uncompromising psychological excess. 

This is a bruising experience driven by a ferocious Jennifer Lawrence, one that’s framed inside the tight, suffocating proportions of a 4:3 image. While it’s a visceral experience, it’s also, crucially, hard to actually enjoy. That may well be the point, but it doesn’t win you many fans.

Grace (Lawrence) and her husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson) relocate from New York to his late uncle’s country house, a place of rambling rooms and creeping dread. Pregnancy, a death in the family, and Jackson’s long stretches away at work push Grace into a restless, feral agitation. She prowls the house, drinks too much beer, toys with knives, and imagines (or possibly invites) the attention of a biker who keeps circling the property. Ramsay fractures the timeline into shards - forest fires, smashed bottles, bodies thrashing to music - it's the world as a kaleidoscope of impulses Grace can’t control.

The film’s strength is also its most frustrating limit: the total immersion into Grace’s experience. Ramsay, whose WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (2001) remains a benchmark for on-screen maternal torment, leans hard into sensation. It recalls this years IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU, another recent account of toxic motherhood where violence - emotional, psychological and occasionally physical - is just as relentless. 

You could argue there’s an honesty to it, yet Ramsay's assault dulls her film’s edge. What was once hallucinatory becomes literal and Lawrence, committed as she is, burns so hot so early that her performance has little room to escalate.

By contrast, Sissy Spacek as Grace’s mother-in-law gives the film some breathing space and by extension, gives us some relief. Likewise Pattinson whose confused Jackson is frightened, devoted and disappointed all at once, a man watching his marriage slip away with no idea how to save it. They help rehumanise the film but these are but occasional moments amid the relentless chaos. 

Ramsay goes some way to pulling it together in the closing stretch, finding flickers of connection that help us bridge the gap. But even then, DIE MY LOVE remains a jagged, difficult object. A film more admirable than likeable, more punishing than cathartic.

HOME