Jennifer Lawrence Gives Everything to Die My Love
Lynne Ramsay’s film is a remarkable adaptation of an intense story about a life unraveling.
About the Original Novel
Die, My Love, the acclaimed debut novel by Ariana Harwicz, an Argentinian writer living in France, was published in 2012. It tells the story of an unnamed narrator who conveys her rage, contempt, and frustrated desires as she shares her life.
- She is a foreigner in the French countryside.
- A stalled writer, angry about caring for her new baby.
- She despises her husband for his sexual inadequacy.
- She carries on an affair with a married neighbor.
- “A breath of irrationality had set fire to my existence,” she admits.
Plot Intensity and Themes
After a hospital stay, she appears calmer but erupts again at her son’s second birthday party:
“I hope you all die, every last one of you… Just die, my love.”
A diagnosis of postpartum psychosis does not fully explain her turmoil. Among many recent works about women confronting the challenges of motherhood — including last year’s Nightbitch — Die, My Love stands out for its extremity.
Reflection by Philip Larkin
Reviewing Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems, Philip Larkin noted the power of expressing experiences we cannot truly identify with, describing them as both shocking and sorrowful:
“How valuable they are depends on how highly we rank the expression of experience with which we can in no sense identify, and from which we can only turn with shock and sorrow.”
This observation resonates with the unsettling nature of Die, My Love.
Author’s summary: This film adaptation captures the raw emotional turmoil and extreme experiences of motherhood portrayed in Ariana Harwicz’s intense debut novel.