Rating: 4/10
“Die My Love” holds the viewer to a window, peeking into a dome of absolute domestic misery. This film, adapted from the novel of the same name, follows Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) as they grapple with the detrimental changes in their relationship. Writer and director Lynne Ramsey’s newest release is not interested in the audience’s comfort, but even though it does not take its portrayal of Grace’s instability as far as it could have, the film’s rawness is the best thing about it.
The birth of Grace and Jackson’s son — who, interestingly, remains unnamed — and their move to a hand-me-down home in rural Montana pushes Grace into a depressive, psychotic episode that lasts throughout the runtime. The audience meets her just as her role as a mother is about to begin: She is heavily pregnant and heavily unaware of the ways in which she is about to be disappointed by Jackson. He enjoys the company of their kid whenever convenient, and continues his life and career as it once was, while Grace, jobless, is unfairly shackled to their household.
One of the obvious highlights of “Die My Love” is the acting. It’s nothing anyone familiar with Lawrence or Pattinson would be surprised to see — as their best dramatic performances remain in previous works like “Mother!” and “The Lighthouse,” respectively — but both leads execute notably convincing, frenetic performances.
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Unfortunately, they just aren’t backed by a script that is as strong as their ability to deliver it.
An aspect that felt wrongly overlooked is Grace’s former career as a writer: What did she write about? In fact, who was she before her pregnancy at all? It’s understandable to intentionally create some distance between Grace and the viewer to mirror the state of intense confusion stirring within her, but it was overdone and left her feeling like a hollow stereotype, rather than a rounded character.
One of the first times Grace is found on her own, it’s just after she’s gotten done feeding her son for the night. Freed from the leash of needing to care for anyone for once, she gravitates towards a blank page sitting at her desk, and attempts to get something down on the paper. But, she resigns quickly — her breastmilk continues to spill out of her, ultimately mixing and seeping into the ink on the paper. Grace’s work is now forever stained by her new role as a struggling, unsatisfied mother.
It is with this lack of subtlety that “Die My Love” tackles the subject of a sharp loss of identity after motherhood. Grace is constantly tortured, annoyed, bothered and angry; so, it’s easy to feel bad for her, but it is hard to feel like she’s anyone outside of this trope of a poor, tortured woman.
Scenes like Grace and Jackson singing along to their favorite song from when we assume they once got along help flesh their relationship out — and the film is at its best when it feels like these characters actually had a life before the cameras started rolling. But this does not happen often enough. This is not to say that the story should have started earlier in their relationship, but glimpses into these characters’ past within their current context made the film feel whole.
Around the middle chunk of the film, it finds itself stuck in a rut: Jackson does something unhelpful, and Grace lashes out. Jackson attempts to be helpful, and Grace lashes out. Jackson exists, Grace lashes out. She is not granted much complexity, and her behaviors feel like they’re almost being mocked or simply used as shock value. She is constantly mistreated and hardly understood. At times, the film feels like it’s taking everyone else’s side and beating her down too, turning her flat, doing the very thing it aims to criticize.
Even though the film is dead focused on showing Grace’s current state, it still feels like it’s holding back on showing certain elements. The rut could have been broken if each act of resistance from Grace made it feel like the stakes were getting higher and higher, but most of the film feels like a plateau of anxiety until the catastrophic ending.
Postpartum depression deserves to be portrayed appropriately, but the lack of detail on Grace makes it easy to dismiss her behavior as something less substantial. It’s unclear how much of her actions can be attributed to her new mental state and how much of it is how she just is, because we never find out who she is as a person.
The film ends on a very pessimistic note that, combined with its surface-level character work, leaves a sour impression on what it’s trying to say about postpartum mothers paired with aloof fathers. It builds up an interesting premise with intriguing characters, so much so that you wish you could follow them into a different movie altogether — one that knows them beyond their current circumstance.
