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| Director Lynne Ramsay |
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| Ramsay on the set with Jennifer Lawrence |
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| Jennifer Lawrence |
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| Lawrence, Ramsay, and Robert Pattinson |
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| Lawrence and Pattinson |
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| Cannes press conference |
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| novelist Ariana Harwicz |
DIE MY LOVE A Great Britain USA Canada (118 mi) 2025 d: Lynne Ramsay
I’m stuck between wanting to do something, and not wanting to do anything at all. —Grace (Jennifer Lawrence)
This film was a fuckin’ monster, and could certainly leave viewers perplexed, receiving mixed scores at Cannes when it premiered (Cannes Film Festival 2025 jury grid), perhaps coming as no surprise that its arthouse darkness has divided audiences, though this is an extensively re-edited version than what played at Cannes, where she only had 5 days to edit before the festival screening. Nobody makes movies like this anymore, as no one else seems to have the guts to try, having nothing in common with what you see in mainstream movie theaters, where all you see in theaters today, on streaming platforms, or even at film festivals is relatively generic filmmaking, yet this is as bold, abstract, and ferociously artistic as they come, made by the reassuring hand of a filmmaker who literally inhabits the fractured, psychological mindset of an alienated female character likely suffering from postpartum depression following childbirth (a phrase never mentioned in the film), revealing just how suffocating her life and marriage become after childbirth. Much like the character, viewers have no chance to escape, yet that’s simply the backdrop for what is ultimately an off-the-rails crazy love story, taking us along for a wild ride, where we feel like we’ve been on an epic adventure, like Odysseus in The Odyssey, where there’s nothing sugar coated about it. This is a film that invites us to walk in her shoes, not diagnose her problem, or figure out a cure, just identify with the unknown mystery within. Impossible to believe any man on the planet could make this film, though the closest may be John Cassavetes exploring the emotionally exhaustive mood swings of Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence (1974), or Ingmar Bergman writing for Liv Ullman, who was pregnant in real-life with the director’s child in Persona (1966), with actress Jennifer Lawrence offering a raw and explosive performance that defies belief, claiming women directors aren’t over-controlling and don’t “overdirect” like male directors typically do (Jennifer Lawrence Says Female Directors Don't ...), suggesting Lynne Ramsay was the opposite of that, describing her as an instinctual director, working without an ego, acutely observational, using music on the set, and “very emotionally led.” Can’t really say this is better than RATCATCHER (1999) and MORVERN CALLAR (2002), two of her best, but its sprawling canvas is equally as impressive in its fiercely original style of filmmaking. Putting this in context, Ramsay’s other works are short films Small Deaths (Lynne Ramsay, 1996) - YouTube (11:13) and GASMAN (1997), Lynne Ramsay's 1970s Christmas in Scotland - YouTube (14:18), along with features We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), and 2018 Top Ten List #2 You Were Never Really Here (2017), where every one is extraordinary, but this one contains a relentlessly bold spirit that dares viewers to come along for an intentionally disorienting journey, literally imposing a woman’s troubling mindset into the theater, where it’s hard not to be affected by the frontal assault to the senses. This is liberated filmmaking, actually filmed in Calgary, Canada, about as out of the way a place for a Scottish filmmaker to go, sadly losing her mother just days before the Cannes screening (her 8th visit!), whose works are marked by a fascination with children, young people and mothers, and a loss of innocence, as well as the recurring themes of alienation, grief, guilt, death, and its aftermath, with Ramsay collaborating with British guitarist and songwriter George Vjestica (a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) to provide the musical score. The film is marked by long periods of tedium where nothing much happens, followed by moments of unanticipated intensity that literally shock viewers into seeing and experiencing something they’d never imagine on their own, which is the beauty of Ramsay’s filmmaking, as it continually lives on the edge, typically eliciting career-best performances out of her actors (think Samantha Morton, Tilda Swinton, Joaquin Phoenix, and now Jennifer Lawrence). By the way, this film would drastically lose much of its combustible power if seen on a smaller screen, as this is designed with a theater experience in mind.
The film is an adaptation by Irish playwright Enda Walsh, British playwright Alice Birch, and Scottish filmmaker Ramsay of the eponymous 120-page novel Matate, Amor by Argentinian author Ariana Harwicz, one of the most radical figures in contemporary Argentinian literature, first published in 2012, using a surrealist, stream-of-consciousness format following a woman in rural France who experiences a mental breakdown after having a child, struggling with isolation, motherhood, and intense emotions, described as a “powerful mosaic of the mind.” It's impossible to come out unscathed from this film, never explaining the state of emergency of its protagonist, where a woman is battling her demons, embracing exclusion yet wanting to belong, craving freedom while feeling trapped, yearning for family life but wanting to burn the entire house down, feeling ever more stifled and repressed, always on the verge of madness, at one point jumping into a pool filled with children in just her underwear, where it’s as if she experiences over-stimulation from the surrounding environment, with the director using visceral cinematic language to express the crushing reality of domestic life through the use of close-ups, fractured scenes, sensory imagery, and an overly intrusive sound design, such as the baby's cry, the world’s most annoying dog barking relentlessly, or sex and silence bleeding into one another. Blurring the lines between reality and sensory overload, where it’s impossible to know how much of this is real and how much exists only in the imagination, yet that’s the real beauty of this particular film, as there are flashbacks and hallucinations, with an erratic, stream-of-consciousness narrative providing a window into her crumbling state of mind, always teetering on the edge of reality, reminiscent of Catherine Deneuve in Roman Polanski’s mind-altering REPULSION (1965), occasionally lashing out violently, where you often suspect it’s imagined, but the cuts on her face afterwards tell us all we need to know. Bruising and confrontational, yet anchored in an unapologetic beauty and lyricism, Ramsay has crafted a unique sensory experience that may take some viewers by surprise, especially considering a familiarity with this actress, as Jennifer Lawrence is someone we’ve grown up with, breaking onto the scene in Debra Granik’s 2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #3 Winter's Bone (2010), followed by David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook (2012), where she won a Best Actress Oscar when she was just 22 years of age, famously tripping going up the stairs to the stage to accept her award, American Hustle (2013), and Joy (2015), as well as Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! (2017), where she has literally stolen our hearts with the exceptional nature of her performances. But this is something else altogether, a blatant protest against conventionality that can be disorienting and brutal, as one moment she’s lucid and calm, while the next is sheer chaos and confusion, moving effortlessly between banality and eruptions of extreme explosiveness that seemingly come out of nowhere, where this is a director that refuses to pander to the audience, beginning as a painter, and then a photographer, described by British film critic Mark Kermode as “combining the visual poetry of Robert Bresson with the down-to-earth grit of Ken Loach, and the ecstasy of pure cinema.” Jennifer Lawrence revealed she was about four months pregnant when shooting began, adding an unfiltered layer of rawness and emotional authenticity to her performance, with Stephanie Zacharek from Time magazine aptly describing it as “the kind of performance you go to the movies for.”
Part dark psychological thriller and part black comedy, the storyline is simple and ambiguously understated, turning uniquely complex, accentuated by the power of the performances. Beautifully shot on 35mm by Irish cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, who the director has worked with before, emphasizing color and texture, and produced by Martin Scorsese, who brought the book to the attention of Jennifer Lawrence’s company Excellent Cadaver, who in turn brought it to Lynne Ramsay. At the outset of the film we see a New York City couple arriving to a remote location in rural Montana, entering an empty dilapidated home filled with old wallpaper, with Jennifer Lawrence as Grace, a writer meant to be working on a book, accompanying her musician wannabe partner Jackson (Robert Pattinson), both free spirits exhibiting an unleashed animalistic energy between them, like the erotically charged wrestling scene in the Lindsay Anderson drama IF (1968), doing plenty of drinking and dancing, having plenty of uninhibited sex, where this was his childhood home, vacated by a deceased relative who shot himself, though still filled with haunting memories. This family home provides the foundation for the narrative, surrounded by forests and grasslands, as it’s a world where nature continually intrudes, much like Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), where the mysterious allure of beauty also eludes to signs of impending danger, like being stuck in the Overlook Hotel of Stephen King’s The Shining. That unrestrained lifestyle all changes with the birth of a child, as their lives start falling apart. While there are surreal family scenes in their new home that are mysteriously strange, with Sissy Spacek from Robert Altman’s equally unfathomable 3 Women (1977) as Jackson’s mother Pam, who sleeps with a loaded rifle after the death of her husband (an equally traumatic event), and informs Grace “Everybody goes a little loopy the first year,” DIE MY LOVE | Official Clip #3 | In Theaters November | With ... YouTube (1:30), and Nick Nolte as Jackson’s eccentric, dementia-suffering father Harry (before his passing), who wants everybody cleared out of his brother’s house, thinking he’s still living there, eliciting a claustrophobic feeling of being trapped, as if the world is closing in on them. Yet there’s also a prevalent use of symbolism, as outside, for instance, horses run free, a poetic sign of transcendence in Tarkovsky’s ANDREI RUBLEV (1966), and a connection to the primal instincts of the natural world, where one of the most powerful scenes has the couple arguing in the car while riding through the forest and unexpectedly crashing into one of those beautiful animals, with the soundtrack cutting to 60’s rock supergroup Cream singing a live version of “Crossroads” CREAM Crossroads 1968 YouTube (4:48) in the immediate aftermath, a song choice that targets people of a certain age, where it’s like an anthem to lost youth, now living only in our memories. Yet one thing is clear, violence, the imagining of it, the physical infliction of it, and its effect on the psyche, is what dominates this film. After childbirth, something is not right with Grace, seeing everything that is normal as imprisoning, making her feel like a caged animal, where the only place she can feel free is in the forest next to her house, often retreating there in unexpected moments, even going on long walks with the baby carriage, where it’s not the baby that she feels disconnected to, it’s everything else. Where once she had a healthy sexual appetite, now their sex life is almost nonexistent, an essential part of her life that is lost after the baby is born, and while Jackson is sympathetic, he doesn’t really understand what she’s going through and his despair is evident, becoming aloof and distant, not around when she needs him, often away on the road for work, leaving her to contend with her own demons, with growing suspicions that he’s cheating on her, DIE MY LOVE | Official Clip | In Theaters November | With ... YouTube (2:06).
Bleak and unflinching, an extended meditation on life and death that seem to endlessly torment this woman, it walks the line between the interior and the exterior, bringing the viewer inside a mind spiraling out of control, taking us to some dark places, offering a kind of voyeuristic filmmaking, as the viewer watches Grace from the outside, unable to penetrate her troubled mind, creating an unsettling sense of intimacy and distance, Die, My Love clip official from Cannes Film Festival 2025 YouTube (1:43). LaKeith Stanfield as Karl plays an interesting role as a largely unseen neighbor who constantly rides by the house on his motorcycle, feeling completely imaginary, like a character seen from a distance luridly playing out in her head, coming across like Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s mid-19th century novel Wuthering Heights (Arnold) (2011), having a sexual affair, part of the unrestrained demons screaming for freedom inside, an example of how she bottles up pressure and frustration. For instance, Lawrence has a lot of nudity in this film, but very little sexual release, just another part of a woman’s overall frustration, finding it impossible to blend in with the world around her, where she’s not afraid to be unlikable, or to shed her inhibitions, yet she remains off-limits, positively refusing help from others, as they remain outside her personal orbit, DIE MY LOVE | Official Clip #2 | In Theaters November | With ... YouTube (1:37). There’s a positively brilliant use of the John Prine song sung with Iris DeMent, “In Spite of Ourselves,” John Prine and Iris DeMent - In Spite of Ourselves (Live From ... YouTube (5:04), which was heard recently in Celine Song’s Materialists (2025), but this one beautifully accentuates the deeply flawed and exposed vulnerabilities of the dysfunctional romantic couple besieged by a neverending series of problems, where at least for this one tender musical moment, it’s easy to feel sympathetic for them both. Perhaps the most common element in all of Ramsay’s films is the extraordinary use of music, especially her song choices, which are completely in sync with what she’s psychologically trying to say with her visual style, exhibiting a superlative gift of composition, where her innovative cinema is like an impressionistic collage of submerged emotions bursting through the surface, where you never know what’s going to happen, and you may take issue with how she does it, jumping around in time using a non-linear narrative, yet the result is a striking, if not shattering, exploration of the darkest corners of the human psyche. Refusing to see what his wife is struggling with, late in the film Grace turns to her husband and says, “I’m right here, you just can’t see me.” That invisibility may be what this fever dream of a film is all about, recalling the words of playwright Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman, with a frustrated wife passionately defending her long-neglected husband by reminding us, “Attention must be paid.” The apocalyptic finale, seemingly right out of Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice (Offret) (1986), or Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf (Le Temps du Loup) (2003), is just extraordinary, especially considering the volatile moments that led us there, where you see an entire forest catching fire within seconds, images of extraordinary intensity that we also see briefly over the opening credits, becoming a spectacular composition of her inner spirit bursting into flames, audaciously heading butt naked into the eye of the storm, where she couldn’t be more exposed and vulnerable. Yet there is no hesitation, which may as well be the mindset of the director, as this couldn’t be a more fearlessly liberating style of cinema, using catastrophic imagery on the screen to delineate the catastrophe happening within, with the voice of an unaccompanied Ramsay (recorded on an iPhone) heard quietly singing the post-punk Joy Division song “Love Will Tear Us Apart” Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart, 1995 Remastered ... YouTube (3:38) over the end credits, a band whose lead singer, Ian Curtis, also battled depression, beautifully expressing the brash, in-your-face punkish style of this rare and exceptional director.
