Die My Love (2025)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Mommy Brain

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Only her fifth feature film since her remarkable 1999 debut Ratcatcher, the new film by Lynne Ramsay, Die My Love, continues in her signature style. It's all here, the poetic, often dreamy looks at death, parenthood, a refreshing lack of exposition, a canny editing style, fluid use of camera and music, etc. But this time she has gone much darker. (Yes, darker perhaps than even We Need to Talk About Kevin.)

We meet Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) first in a planted, unmoving shot, inside a ramshackle house out in the middle of nowhere. Dead leaves litter the floor. Jackson has inherited the house from his uncle, who apparently died by suicide within. He eagerly explores, she tentatively looks around. Cut to some time later, and the couple has a baby. But something is wrong with Grace. She's clearly suffering from postpartum (or postnatal) depression. But it's a rather extreme case. It's so extreme, we spy Grace crawling through the tall weeds with a kitchen knife, as if stalking her own child.

Things get worse. She desires sex with Jackson, but he never seems to be in the mood. Instead he takes a job that keeps him away from the house for long periods. Worse, he brings home a dog that literally barks constantly. A mysterious man (LaKeith Stanfield) on a motorcycle seems to appear from time to time. Jackson's parents Harry and Pam (Nick Nolte and Sissy Spacek, reuniting onscreen for the first time since Affliction and 1980's Heart Beat) live nearby. Harry apparently dies at some point, leaving Pam on her own. Pam is the only one who notices that something is going on with Grace, but Pam has her own problem. She sleepwalks while carrying her husband's loaded rifle.

The movie may or may not be taking place inside Grace's head, and some things never seem quite real, which is exactly Ramsay's point. She's not making a movie about postpartum depression — which has long been stigmatized, probably because men generally don't get it — she's making a movie about what it might feel like. She uses the classic Academy ratio of 1.37:1 to create a trapped or constricted feel for Grace. The texture is stuck somewhere between dreamy and realistic, too much to be one and not enough to be the other.

In one striking moment, Grace wanders the house after having just breastfed, her breast still exposed. She goes to a desk and absently begins spatting dark paint onto a piece of paper. Dripping breast milk mixes with the paint, making a strange design. Time jumps around. Harry appears to her as a ghost. They have a wedding and a party. But even when surrounded by people, Grace still seems to be in her own head. Conversations are weirdly one-sided, and she often just wanders away.

There have been other "descent-into-madness" movies, such as Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and mother!, the latter also with Lawrence, but Ramsay's take is different. She seems to have no opinion on this situation; she's only interested in the sensations that are here, good, bad, or neutral. She has always used music well, and Die My Love contains a brilliant selection of songs that run the gamut, from a squeaky child's version of "Let's Twist Again" to John Prine's "In Spite of Ourselves," the latter a scene so lovely it almost seems as if things are going to be okay. They may not be, but there are moments of beauty in-between the pain if we only look.