Review: ‘Die My Love’ is a primal scream of maternal rage
Jennifer Lawrence stars as Grace, a new mother struggling to hold onto her sanity, lashing out with wild unpredictability. Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay’s fifth feature, Die My Love, provocatively asks: Can a wild woman be domesticated? While she hints at her answer early on, the audience remains uncertain as the story unfolds.
Grace and her partner Jackson (Robert Pattinson) move into a new home and begin their life together. What follows is so unpredictable that it feels both shocking and inevitable.
Die My Love is the collaboration of three daring women: Jennifer Lawrence, who stars and produces; writer Ariana Harwicz, whose 2012 novel Matate, amor explores a young mother unraveling in rural France; and Ramsay, known for powerful, evocative imagery and crafting cinematic despair and joy in equal measure. Ramsay adapted the novel alongside Enda Walsh and Alice Birch.
"The result is a ragged primal scream of a film — not a cry for help, but rather, a bellow of maternal rage."
In their new home, once inhabited by Jackson’s Uncle Frank, he encourages Grace to write “the great American novel” while he considers recording an album. The decrepit house, filled with the life of their infant son Harry, holds endless possibilities despite its worn condition.
Author's summary: Die My Love captures the raw ferocity of motherhood through the lens of a woman fighting for her identity amid chaos and confinement.