Jennifer Lawrence Burns Brightly in Lynne Ramsay’s Uninhibited ‘Die My Love’

Alci Rengifo

The work of Scottish director Lynne Ramsay is rarely devoid of fierce emotion. Her worlds are populated by characters who are trapped in environments where violence can erupt out of sheer hatred, or the need to make sense of a sick society. “Die My Love,” Ramsay’s first film in seven years, keeps her visceral energy intact for an attempt at a more intimate look at the way motherhood and marriage can potentially threaten to spiral into real breakdowns. Both Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson deliver brave performances, soaked in angst and madness, yet another real star of this movie is its almost go for broke style. Ramsay is so determined to evoke a particular state of mind that the movie itself fully goes off the rails.

Ramsay is adapting Ariana Harwicz’s 2017 novel “Die My Love,” which was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize. The setting is changed from rural France in the book to rural Montana for the film. A young couple, Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson), have not been married for too long. It began as a passionate relationship filled with intense sex, followed by them tying the knot. Now the couple has a new baby boy. Motherhood has clearly added an extra weight to Grace’s existence. While Jackson goes off to his unnamed job doing whatever rugged men do in Montana, Grace is left in their small house, alone with the infant. The young mom begins to act out in strange ways, including violent mood swings, going so far as to shoot an annoying new dog Jackson brings home. Some might assume what is going on here could be a result of postpartum depression, but “Die My Love” sets out to capture the breakdown of a romantic relationship after having a child. Though Grace’s sweet mother-in-law, Pam (Sissy Spacek), describes what might be happening to the young mother as her “going loopy.” As Grace’s behavior grows more extreme, it threatens her union with Jackson.

“Die My Love” is sure to divide audiences and critics. It is one of those feverish, stream of consciousness experiences, like Darren Aronofsky’s “Mother,” also starring Lawrence, where the filmmaker wants to create a mood more than a story. Ramsay has never been obscure in her themes. Her last film, “You Were Never Really Here,” was a kinetic vigilante thriller using the story of a man hired to track down a politician’s missing daughter as a window to look at sex trafficking, or a world where predators lurk everywhere. One of her best films, “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” unnervingly explores the hesitation of motherhood and culminates as an unforgettable statement on the mass shootings phenomenon. This auteur is always daring. “Die My Love” has her boldness in its manic visual intensity, shot by cinematographer Seamus McGarvey with a grainy, indie cinema energy that can become hallucinatory. The soundtrack features an atmospheric score by Ramsay, with George Vjestica, Raife Burchell and Ben Frost and rock, country and punk needle drops.

The performances by Lawrence and Pattinson are an experience unto themselves. Lawrence’s role requires supreme physical and emotional effort. It is surely one of this year’s most uninhibited deliveries by a known star, who is also returning to the screen after a two year hiatus. Grace is an entrapped woman, both physically and emotionally. While Jackson goes out into the world, doing who knows what (she finds a packet of condoms in their car’s glove box), she is left responsible for a small life that devours her every waking minute. The story hints at how Grace used to dream of being a writer but only finds the energy to let ink drop from a pen onto a blank notebook, late at night. Her rages grow into more external ones as she consumes more alcohol, including sudden decisions to walk down a lonesome highway, strip down during a get together to jump into a swimming pool, and demolish a bathroom. Pattinson’s role is as a clueless, at times comically pathetic, partner who doesn’t seem to realize his role in his wife’s serious crisis. He barely lifts a finger at home, because he goes to work, of course, and tries to assure Grace everything is fine. She tries to recover some of their original sense of fun by demanding, at one point, that they have sex in the car.

The creative wildness of “Die My Love” is both its strength and its blind spot. Ramsay is so committed to creating a purely visceral experience that whatever idea or point she wants to get across can get lost in the firestorm. We clearly see Grace losing control, yet, quite possibly by design, it’s never absolutely clear as to the cause. But the character is never fully built. She is meant to be an aspiring writer, yet there are no books in the house and never does Grace actually talk about her writing. In strong films like “The Hours” or “Shirley,” female writers entrapped by a patriarchal system and spiraling into depression channel their experiences into their craft, because it is the one essential lifeline they have, though those were movies about actual writers like Virginia Woolf and Shirley Jackson. Grace does not seem to have that willpower. She could be anything though, since the agenda here appears to be how far Lawrence can take the performance. Conversations between Grace and Jackson amount to nothing insightful, as to why they are even together. Is this a story that winks at the psychological impact of societal expectations and oppressions; or is it solely one that explores the impacts of choices, like the consequences of getting into an ill-fated marriage out of sheer sexual fervor? Maybe the moral is, don’t have a child if you want the freedom to live as free spirits in rural Montana? The one character with a clearer purpose is Sissy Spacek’s quietly sad Pam, who has been caring for her dementia-ridden husband, Harry (Nick Nolte). She is a woman from a more conservative era, whose life has been determined by this overbearing man, who is now losing touch with reality. Yet, Grace and Jackson don’t have such a relationship. There is no sense of social pressure hovering over them. She is restless and he is quite possibly just too dim.

“Die My Life” eventually reaches a fiery ending, taking to new heights the hallucinatory aspects of Ramsay’s approach. This director is so talented and the actors so committed, that this movie never becomes boring. What it amounts to is flashes of brilliance in lieu of a more cohesive form. Urgent things are attempting to convey themselves but never become fully clear. In the tradition of performances like Isabelle Adjani in “Possession,” Jennifer Lawrence astounds with the places she is willing to explore as an actor, unafraid of what the camera sees. That alone makes this film worth watching. It would be even stronger if the filmmaker was as upfront with what she believes this film is about. In the end, we are still left with the desire to see Ramsay continue to be a unique voice in cinema, and hope she returns more often to offer challenging material that stands apart from the typical, watered down servings dominating theaters.

“Die My Love” releases Nov. 7 in theaters nationwide.