In a year full of committed, off-the-wall performances, no one can say Jennifer Lawrence in Lynn Ramsay’s throbbing chamber piece “Die My Love” won’t live rent-free in your head. Adapted from Argentine author Ariana Harwicz’s novel of the same name, the film pulses with a feverish intensity. For nearly two hours, you’re trapped inside the mind of a mother on the brink of collapse, isolated in a rural Montana farmhouse that her partner inherited, fighting to stay sane as her world closes in.
Shot in a boxed 4:3 aspect ratio to emphasize its emotional confinement, “Die My Love” is both fascinating and frustrating. Ramsay’s direction radiates control and precision, but the film often feels less like a study of postpartum despair and more like an extravagant acting showcase for its stars. With Lawrence and Robert Pattinson going head-to-head, Ramsay seems content to wind them up and watch them implode. It’s hard to look away, but it’s equally hard to feel much beyond the spectacle.
Lawrence—who’s no stranger to cinematic agony after “mother!”—plays Grace, a writer who no longer writes and whose early scenes find her crawling on all fours and howling in erotic delirium. When the honeymoon phase ends and her partner Jackson (Pattinson) disappears for long stretches to a vaguely defined job, she’s left alone with a newborn and a dissolving sense of self. Like in “Nightbitch,” there’s a potent undercurrent about identity and domestic isolation, though here it’s filtered through Ramsay’s lens of surreal menace. Dreamlike visions of a burning forest hint at an inner war between self and circumstance, a marriage combusting in real time.
Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography bathes everything in a sickly haze. His desaturated palette and warped lenses heighten the claustrophobia, capturing the feeling of a relationship suffocating under its own expectations. Ramsay’s camera often feels like a voyeur, hovering just close enough to catch every scream, breakdown, and violent outburst. The result is raw, but also repetitive. Grace’s spiral—locking herself in bathrooms, smashing furniture, and lashing out—hits the same emotional note again and again. Eventually, the chaos dulls instead of deepens.
Pattinson, meanwhile, seems stranded. His subdued performance is swallowed by Lawrence’s fury; his character becomes more of a prop than a partner. Their dynamic, meant to mirror the decaying intimacy of a couple who’ve lost their way, instead registers as a one-sided implosion. Ramsay introduces a mysterious figure named Biker (a near-silent Lakeith Stanfield), whose ghostly appearances might be literal or imagined. His presence could have cracked open new layers of Grace’s psyche, but instead it only muddies the film’s already chaotic rhythm.
By the time Jackson finally confronts Grace’s instability, the outcome feels inevitable. Ramsay wants us to peer into the abyss with these characters, but the film keeps us at arm’s length. It’s an exercise in emotional endurance more than empathy. You admire the commitment, the craft, the sheer audacity of Lawrence’s performance, but like Grace herself, “Die My Love” seems destined to self-destruct.
It’s a brutal and beautiful mess: a portrait of psychological decay that dares you to look but rarely lets you feel.
DIE MY LOVE opens in theaters Friday, November 7th.