The novel film Die, My Love opens with snapshots of a flourishing relationship: a couple inspects their novel home, which the man, Jackson (Robert Pa
The novel film Die, My Love opens with snapshots of a flourishing relationship: a couple inspects their novel home, which the man, Jackson (Robert Pattinson), has inherited from his overdue uncle. It’s in rural Montana, a far cry from New York City, where Jackson and Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) lived previously. They note the sullied floors, the rats scurrying upstairs. Though it’s a gigantic change, they’re excited enough to christen the house in the way only two youthful and hungry lovers can. Writer-director Lynne Ramsay has fun juxtaposing the banal and the carnal, and imbues both with a crackle of danger.
The sound of those rats suggest that something is amiss under the surface—and as Die, My Love unfolds, it becomes startlingly clear that not all is well with Grace. The trouble begins shortly after the birth of her first child, a radiant and bouncy baby boy whom Grace loves dearly. She’s experiencing the onset of postpartum depression, a condition that gradually worsens into near psychosis. Her relationship with Jackson, once so fun and loose and bohemian, curdles badly. She acts out, she maybe hallucinates, she wanders around outside at night, searching for something.
Ramsay is a keen purveyor of psychic distress, and here creates a fluid, dreamlike (or nightmarish) film grammar to express the cataclysm of Grace’s mind. She captures arresting images, many set against the backdrop of a dusky Montana wilderness, the sky’s ambient featherlight casting Grace and her surroundings in hues of murky blue and heather gray. The film, which premiered here at Cannes on May 17, is a riot of sensory wonder, its lush visuals clashing with a droning soundscape of buzzing houseflies and dog barks. Scenes judder to sudden stops; we briefly journey backward in time with no warning. It’s a jarring film, deliberately so. As it alternately lurches and glides along, Die, My Love gives us no indication of where it is heading—because, I suppose, Grace has no idea herself.
Adapted from Ariana Harwicz’s novel, Die, My Love joins a recent handful of films about the mental wages of motherhood. But it’s got a flintier sensibility than last year’s Nightbitch, and an even more sinister outlook than the upcoming If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Ramsay also invites in a daring idea: that amidst all the risk and agony of Grace’s condition, there is something like liberation. Grace’s sensitivity to the bullshit of miniature talk frees her from it. Her sudden allergy to Jackson allows her to better see his inadequacies. There is even an anarchic allure to some of Grace’s violence. She seems to be peering through a crack in the membrane of the known world, glimpsing some awesome truth on the other side.
Or maybe that’s just what her illness has convinced her. Die, My Love is a tricky film, one that offers neither therapeutic comfort nor remedy. It is sympathetic to Grace’s crisis, but does not really try to drag her out of it. There’s an unsettling ambivalence to the film, a half-embrace of Grace’s altered reality even when it grows frightening. Ramsay’s approach to this material feels radical, a kind of compassion that fascinatingly risks recklessness.
As Grace drifts into fractured consciousness, the film grows a bit repetitive, as if Ramsay is circling the runway before her gigantic, bold payoff. The film must keep a lot of the mental health wisdom of the up-to-date day at bay in order to sustain all of Grace’s looping disarray—and while postpartum mental illness is still woefully under-diagnosed and treated, it strains credibility that this particular set of characters would let Grace deteriorate for so long.
What keeps our attention during the film’s slightly sagging middle, and makes it such bracing viewing, is the marvel of Lawrence’s mesmerizing performance. She cannily balances mordant humor with existential unease and fury, a bolt of energy coursing through the film. Ramsay’s jumble of pictures and sound is bound together by Lawrence’s confident, fearless gravity. It’s quite something to behold: a comedic performance that manages convincing notes of devastation, or a dramatic turn that is also screamingly witty. What a thrill to see Lawrence expanding her artistry like this, a movie star reclaiming the talent that her celebrity once nearly obscured.
She has forceful chemistry with Pattinson—who is limber and natural in his role—and an even more powerful connection with Sissy Spacek, who plays Jackson’s grieving mother, Pam, with a heartbreaking mix of cluelessness and concern. Something unspoken passes between Grace and Pam, as one woman staggers into motherhood and the other considers the end of her familial duties. The film’s most poignant moments are when we see Pam watching Grace unravel—as she, too, maybe unravels—with both alarm and a kind of awe. There she goes, Pam almost seems to murmur—as so many have gone before her.
This story is part of Awards Insider’s in-depth Cannes coverage, including first looks and exclusive interviews with some of the event’s biggest names. Stay tuned for more Cannes stories as well as a special full week of Little Gold Men podcast episodes, recorded live from the festival and publishing every day.
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