Die My Love was Lynne Ramsay’s first film in eight years. But when Jennifer Lawrence initially reached out to her with the novel, she hesitated. She admitted she disliked being typecast into someone who handles the grotesque angles of motherhood. Ramsay wanted to stop talking about Kevin. However, interestingly the filmmaker picked up the project and adapted Ariana Harwicz’s novel about a woman’s experience with post-partum depression/psychosis.
After amassing a six-minute standing ovation and a 24 million distribution deal with Mubi, Lynne Ramsay sat down in Cannes with acclaimed journalist and film critic Elvis Mitchell. With him she discussed the fact that this was not a postpartum film, because “This whole postpartum thing is just bullshit,” and “It’s not about that. It’s about a relationship breaking down, it’s about love breaking down, and sex breaking down after having a baby. And it’s also about a creative block.”
In Die My Love, we follow Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and her partner Jackson (Robert Pattinson), who move to a house in rural Montana and have a child. Grace begins to mentally deteriorate, rapidly losing her mind in the trappings of her new circumstances. She loses the ability to write entirely.
Lawrence gives an utterly amazing performance, and a lot of this film’s creative direction is fantastic. It’s gritty and tacky and bloody. All the songs are childlike and jarring, blaring through the static of a battered car radio with poor signal in the sticks. The arguments between the two leads are brilliant but I did not laugh out loud at any point in this film—which is something lots of people assured was a selling point. What is funny? Hating the mother of your child?
Thematically the thing that distressed me the most about Die My Love was the near senselessness of the protagonist’s self-destruction. Many poor reviews of the work are unanimous in the belief that the film is repetitive. Grace the individual is overlooked or feels she is talked down to, Jackson cannot find the strength to find her sexually attractive, she harms herself. I agree that the relentlessness of these acts of self-harm made this an unsatisfying watch for me personally. However, looking at the notes I made on my first watch I can see at every self-bludgeoning I keep repeatedly writing ‘Why isn’t he helping her?’ Followed by far too many question marks.
The thing I found the most distressing about the film wasn’t the violence per se, but the terror of screaming out repeatedly with no answer. Worse still, this call for help registering as just a nuisance to ‘wait out’. That is legitimately harrowing. There was also the terror of the loss of Grace’s ability to write due to her circumstances.
Did I like this film? I wanted to. It is no secret, I love a woman going insane. Die My Love is a really significant festival addition to me because I had the literal pleasure of discovering Lynne Ramsay’s second feature Morvern Callar last year. Another ‘Woman on the edge’ film. Where Morvern Callar is this delightfully ambiguous, hilarious film embedded in my brain, Die My Love is a film I definitely understand and connect with on paper but did not connect with in its realisation. Maybe it’s the lack of British accents and no one hitting the club after dismembering their boyfriend’s corpse.
Die My Love is brilliant but it did not hit me where it hurts. Lynne Ramsay’s cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart is my favourite part of this film. I just think that using this song in your media should feel earned.
