“I’m right here, you just can’t see me.“
Adapting Ariana Harwicz’s Die, My Love, director Lynne Ramsay – returning for the first time since 2017’s You Were Never Really Here – has co-written the screenplay with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, as we focus in on the portrait of a woman, Grace (Jennifer Lawrence), who is immersed by love and madness, and suffering from post partum depression. When Grace and her partner Jackson (Robert Pattinson) move into an old family home deep in the country, the isolation beings to encourage the unravelling of her teetering wellbeing.
Ramsay’s film, Die My Love, offers no light touches to the reality of post partum and while it might feel heightened on film, that tension is built with incredible effectiveness and intensity, as it should with such subjects. You quickly learn that any film which opens with a beautifully framed empty house, then cuts to a raucous sex scene; to a forest fire; to Lawrence’s Grace crawling through the long grass like a tiger (complete with a knife, which she puts down next to her young baby), certainly suggests we’re in for something unsettling and not devoid of feeling, even if its central characters are physically there, even as they both ache from a loss of reality during the process.
Jennifer Lawrence’s performance switches from compassionate to internal darkness in a second, it’s nuanced, brilliant, terrifying, funny, and one of her finest works. Ramsay also makes it clear that while Grace is going through a psychosis, her attachment to her child isn’t questioned. In that respect, she’s connected and committed; it’s the rest of the world that she cannot stand. Robert Pattinson’s Jackson initially seems like a drunk, off somewhere working and when home he’s scared and avoiding Grace in moments where she’s losing control. However, we never definitely know how much of the truth of what he’s up to, or not, is might be in Grace’s head – as both are in a mess – yet he’s evidently not understanding of the situation, and even after his own breakdown, he does eventually help to try and get her support.
In a filming sense, Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography seamlessly links with Ramsay’s direction throughout, creating an equally down-to-earth and occasionally haunting aesthetic. They utilise a mix of styles, often with shots blurring out, indicating a state of mind, or offering the audience a question mark over what we’re seeing, making us feel as erratic and agitated as the characters themselves. Playing on the themes of rural isolation in many senses and moving into a life you’ve not comprehended before you’re deep inside it, if you’ve suffered with any of the mental illnesses explored, I’d probably recommend watching it with someone who can appreciate that world we’re exploring.
What I found most captivating (and distressing) is how the tension is built and is held. Before bigger collapses of the mind, there’s repeat sequences of dogs barking, music playing loudly, and arguing over ridiculous disputes, which only increases that level of the unsettling. But it’s interesting because you do want to keep watching – which reminded me a little of Lawrence’s performance in Mother! – another film exploring intoxicating anxiety and psychological crashes. As well as a mention for Sissy Spacek, as Jackson’s mother, who’s also struggling but persisting, Jennifer Lawrence is the key to everything strong here, as she holds our attention with a performance that’s a taut, traumatic, darkly funny, and a hypnotising deconstruction of time and memory.
Die My Love does have shadowy, ridiculous comic situations, of that there’s no doubt, but your state of mind might play those moments out differently, depending on your ‘in real life’ experience. Overall, I found this a disconcerting art piece, yet you’re oddly hooked as you follow this story that delves into the complexity of love, while also being fraught with metaphor and figurative ghosts that haunt the ether built beyond us.
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