A young couple with a newborn baby struggle to make things work amid encroaching mental difficulties in Die My Love, which premiered at Cannes and opens this weekend in Prague and cinemas worldwide. This stark drama from director Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here, We Need to Talk About Kevin), adapted from the Argentinean novel Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz, thrives on Jennifer Lawrence’s fully-committed performance in the lead, but the contemplative, leisurely-paced nature of the narrative is unlikely to resonate with general audiences.
Die My Love stars Lawrence and Robert Pattinson as Grace and Jackson, the couple at the center of the film, who move into a family home with a six-month-old baby at the film’s outset. The couple are moving from New York to the rural Midwest—the exact location isn’t specified, but we see Montana license plates—into the former home of Jackson’s deceased uncle; his mom Pam (Sissy Spacek) still lives within moderate walking distance.
A sense of isolation sets in from the very beginning. As Grace and Jackson step into their new home, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey frames the location in a boxy 4:3 aspect ratio that places the characters at the center of rigid, confining spaces that feel nostalgic to Jackson but alien to Grace. The visual presentation emphasizes Grace’s vulnerability and the growing emotional distance from her husband.
Early scenes feature some passionate lovemaking, but Grace is essentially abandoned in the family’s new home. Jackson works as some kind of truck driver—specifics of any kind, including the exact time and place the film is set, are tough to come by—and leaves his wife and child at home for what feels like extended periods of time. She suspects him of adultery, and despite the bare minimum of information we are given, we come to agree through a few subtle hints.
Left without a car, Grace has to walk miles to meet with Pam or buy mac and cheese from the local convenience store, pushing a stroller on rural country roads. The film feels contemporary, especially going by the modern make of the vehicles, but she has almost no access to the outside world: no internet, no mobile phone, not even a landline.
But the isolation isn’t entirely forced upon her; we also get the impression that she has sought this life. Grace takes every line spoken to her as an attack, and she responds in kind. “Your baby’s so cute, does he have a name?” a friendly cashier asks her. “No, we decided not to name him,” she sends back with caustic sarcasm. When the cashier still doesn’t get it, Grace is more forward. “Stop talking. We don’t have to talk.”
The experience of watching Die My Love is a lot like attempting to communicate with Grace. The screenplay, adapted by the director & Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, refuses to tell us anything in a straightforward manner, and never develops an active storyline. At some point, we realize that the entirety of what’s going on in this movie is going on within Grace: it’s a character study of a character who rejects being studied.
Die My Love is a kind of spiritual successor to Bob Rafelson’s classic Five Easy Pieces, which starred Jack Nicholson as a once-promising pianist now living a blue-collar existence and lashing out at the world. But while that film profiled its main character in raw fashion, it also had his back: as Nicholson’s Robert Dupea tells a waitress to hold the turkey between her knees, the movie celebrates him as a kind of counterculture hero. Here, the filmmakers distance themselves from Grace as they acknowledge her undiagnosed mental illness.
That Die My Love works at all is thanks to Lawrence’s stripped-down performance, which lays this character naked as she tries to hide herself from the world. We can relate to the threats she feels from the outside world, and take satisfaction in her razor-edged responses in the same way we did with Nicholson. Her lines earn some genuine laughs, but also reveal a deep pain and sadness.
Pattinson is also fine here, even if we come to despise his character, but two supporting performances stand out: Spacek, as the only character who comes close to understanding what Grace is going through, and Nick Nolte, who appears in a pair of flashbacks as Harry, Pam’s deceased husband. In Harry, who is struggling with dementia and largely ignored by the other characters, Grace briefly finds a kindred spirit.
Die My Love is not for all viewers, but those willing to engage with its quiet intensity will find a haunting portrait of postpartum isolation and psychological decline. Ramsay approaches the subject of mental illness with empathy and precision, avoiding sentimentality while capturing the raw confusion of a mind turning inward. Following Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, it marks the second major film in recent weeks to treat mental health with such rare tenderness and realism.
