Never timid, always willing to push toward extremes, and unflinching in her boldness, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay remains an unabashed risk taker.
In Die My Love, Ramsay adapts a 2012 novel by Ariana Harwicz, an Argentine writer who set her story in rural France. Working from a screenplay she wrote with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, Ramsay moves the story to Montana and leaves it to Jennifer Lawrence to convey the complex inner life of new mom Grace, a bored, libidinous wife mired in postpartum depression.
But don't mistake Die My Love for a disease-related TV movie. Lawrence and Ramsey stretch the story's metaphoric possibilities to the breaking point. Grace seems to embody a near-primal spirit that can't accommodate the life of a stay-at-home mom. Like a cat stalking prey, Grace crawls on all fours through the grass surrounding her house.
As the movie progresses, Grace becomes both more volatile. At one point, she crashes through a plate glass window in the ramshackle home that she and her husband (Robert Pattinson) occupy, a shocking, rebellious eruption.
Jackson's mother (Sissy Spacek) and his addled father (Nick Nolte) live nearby. As a wife who submitted to convention, Spacek's Pam recognizes Grace's "craziness" as a powerful expression that deserves respect.
Graphic sex scenes and nudity are on full display early on. Grace is a sexual being, but Jackson can't keep pace with his ravenous wife. Predictably, she winds up having sex with a biker (LaKeith Stanfield) who enters the movie as if he's casing the house where Grace and Jackson live.
Did the movie need such a digression? Probably not.
Ramsay fragments time, destroying chronological order. Frequently, we must recalibrate where in the story we might be. Ramsay allows parts of the movie to burst onto the screen, throwing scenes at us with an abandon that can mirror Grace's volatility.
Grace's condition grows progressively more outlandish. At a social gathering, she takes off her clothes and jumps into a swimming pool where kids are playing. If you haven't already, you'll begin to wonder why no one has tried to deal with what seems like an obvious case of mental illness.
Ramsey tests us in the same way that she tests her characters. The baby's crying grates on our nerves. Ditto for the incessant barking of dog that Jackson brings home.
I'll include a spoiler for those who'd rather not witness Grace taking a rifle from her mother-in-law's house, walking back to her home, and shooting the unfortunate dog, a creature that's evidently ill and neglected.
Lawrence's purposefully erratic performance seems in sync with the movie's intentions. The world in which Grace finds herself can't accommodate her essential self. OK, that's vague, but it's as close as I can get.
Pattinson's character makes less sense. With a multi-directional haircut and a sheepish demeanor, Jackson looks like a lost traveler in need of directions.
The movie builds toward a finale that can be taken literally or metaphorically, but it's preceded by a kind of gentle detente between Jackson and Grace. Maybe he finally understands the woman he married.
I had my reservations about Die My Love, but I can't finish without an addendum.
I respect Ramsay's courage, something she displayed when she brought her 1999 movie Ratcatcher to the screen and continued in 2002 with Morvern Callar, which relied heavily on the work of Samantha Morton as another difficult character.
Die My Love is Ramsay's first movie since 2018's You Were Never Really Here, which starred Joaquin Phoenix. I hope we don't have to wait another seven years for the next film.
Whatever you think of Die My Love, you should know that Ramsay has a powerful voice, and isn't afraid to raise it. Sometimes, I wondered why I was watching Grace unleash her furies, often in cruel ways. But if Ramsay and Lawrence set out to create a character too combustible for "normal'' life, they've succeeded. Like Grace, Ramsay refuses to be pigeonholed. That's a quality worthy of respect.
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