Grace, a writer and young mother, is slowly slipping into madness. Locked away in an old house in and around Montana, we see her acting increasingly agitated and erratic, leaving her companion, Jackson, increasingly worried and helpless.
Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love is not a film that invites comfort. It is a cinematic descent into the rawest corners of human experience, a work that strips away the protective layers we often place around motherhood, love, and identity. To watch it is to be pulled into a vortex of unease, where silence weighs heavier than dialogue and every gesture carries the tremor of suppressed anguish.
At its core, the film follows Grace, played with astonishing ferocity by Jennifer Lawrence. Grace is a new mother living in rural isolation with her partner Jackson (Robert Pattinson). Their home is unfinished, their relationship strained, and Grace’s sense of self is unraveling. Ramsay does not present her as a figure of noble suffering. Instead, Grace is volatile, abrasive, and often difficult to like. Yet Lawrence’s performance ensures that her breakdown feels painfully authentic. She embodies the disorientation of a woman alienated from her own life, a mother whose bond with her child is both grounding and suffocating.
Photo credit: Kimberly French
What makes Die My Love so unsettling is its refusal to offer easy villains or heroes. Jackson is not cruel, nor is he oblivious in the caricatured sense. He is simply absent; emotionally, physically, and spiritually. His long stretches away at work leave Grace alone, and his attempts at connection fall short. His parents hover at the edges, concerned but ineffectual. The film resists the temptation to assign blame, instead presenting two flawed people caught in circumstances neither can navigate. This ambiguity is part of Ramsay’s brilliance: she forces us to confront the reality that suffering often has no neat source, no single antagonist.
The film’s structure mirrors Grace’s fractured psyche. Ramsay employs impressionistic storytelling, jumping through time and blurring the line between reality and hallucination. Scenes bleed into one another, creating a sense of disorientation that places the audience squarely inside Grace’s perspective. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey reinforces this with a claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio and grainy 35mm texture, making the film feel like a distorted home movie. The effect is suffocating, as though we are trapped inside Grace’s collapsing world.
Photo credit: Seamus McGarvey
Emotion in Die My Love is primal. Ramsay captures moments of feral intimacy; characters clawing at each other, collapsing to the ground in carnal chaos, as well as raw eruptions of despair. Happiness, when it appears, is wild and untamed; misery is equally unfiltered. This animalistic quality underscores the film’s refusal to sanitize human experience. Ramsay is not interested in polite portrayals of motherhood or domesticity. She is interested in the chaos, the mess, the moments that society prefers to keep hidden.
Lawrence’s performance is the film’s gravitational center. She moves through emotional registers with fearless precision, capturing vulnerability, cruelty, humor, and despair in equal measure. Her portrayal is unpredictable, magnetic, and unforgettable. Whether mocking Jackson, imitating the family dog, or hurling herself through glass, she commands attention. It is a performance that refuses to let the audience look away, even when the truth is uncomfortable.
Photo credit: Kimberly French
Pattinson, by contrast, plays Jackson with restraint. His exasperation is palpable, his silence familiar. Together, their interactions capture the quiet tragedies of miscommunication; the unanswered questions, the sullen silences, the disconnect that grows with time. These moments are recognizable to any couple, regardless of circumstance, and they ground the film’s more impressionistic flourishes in lived reality.
Sound plays a crucial role in amplifying Grace’s turmoil. The barking of the family dog, the cries of her baby, and the clash of music; from nostalgic tunes to heavy metal, create a soundscape that mirrors her inner chaos. Ramsay uses sound not as background but as a weapon, heightening discomfort and unease.
For mainstream audiences, Die My Love will be a difficult watch. It is not funny, nor romantic, nor uplifting. It is unapologetically uncomfortable, challenging viewers to confront aspects of motherhood and womanhood that are rarely depicted onscreen. The image of a mother consumed by despair, cold and unlikable, is unsettling. Yet Ramsay insists on its validity. She asks us to reconsider our assumptions, to acknowledge that motherhood is not always a source of joy, and that women are allowed to be flawed, angry, and broken.
Photo credit: Kimberly French
The film’s meandering structure can feel punishing. Scenes stretch on, tension builds, and the audience sits in suspense, waiting for release that never comes. Grace’s decline is relentless, her perception of reality increasingly indistinguishable from hallucination. Is she suffering from postnatal depression, psychosis, or simply the crushing weight of isolation? Ramsay offers no definitive answer. The ambiguity is part of the film’s power, leaving us unsettled and uncertain.
Yet despite its difficulty, Die My Love is profoundly human. It captures the messiness of life, the flaws of its characters, and the rawness of emotion with unflinching honesty. It is a film that demands contemplation, that lingers in silence, that refuses to be forgotten.
Photo credit: Kimberly French
Ramsay has crafted a work of empathy, not sympathy. She does not ask us to like Grace, but to understand her. She does not offer answers, but questions. She does not soothe, but confronts. Die My Love is a film that hurts, that unsettles, that resonates. It is a reminder that cinema can be more than entertainment; it can be an exposed nerve, a mirror to our darkest truths, and a challenge to our deepest assumptions.
Leaving the theater after Die My Love is not like leaving most films. There is no chatter, no laughter, no easy debrief. There is silence. The audience sits with what they have seen, grappling with its weight. It is not a film that entertains, but one that confronts. And in that confrontation lies its power.
Die My Love is released in NZ cinemas from November 27
Find your nearest screening here
Find your nearest screening here