Jennifer Lawrence is madness incarnate in Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, a dark fairytale of motherhood, marriage and post-natal depression in rural Montana, based on Ariana Harwicz’s 2012 novel of the same name. It’s messy and mental, with a killer soundtrack and a taste for merging reality with fiction, past with present – Lawrence and Robert Pattinson are exquisite, with a beautiful supporting performance from Sissi Spacek, and the setting is flawless, creating a strangely ancient feeling, an ethereal space that does not really exist. However, this is also where Die My Love loses some of its effect – there can be such a thing as too high a level of abstraction.
Lawrence plays Grace, who has moved with partner Jackson (Pattinson) from New York to his secluded childhood home for some peace and quiet. There is the usual madly-in-love, at-it-like-rabbits introductory phase, after which Grace finds herself pregnant, then mother to a baby boy, who interestingly remains nameless until the two third point. Suddenly, she is alone, away from the noise of New York, and wasting the days away while Jackson works part-time. Grace’s mental decline is slow, then oh so very fast, like her baby falling asleep – and it isn’t long before Jackson goes from partner to enemy, and the house from creative den to prison. Meanwhile, his mother Pam (Spacek) is dealing with the death of her husband (Nick Nolte), which has led to her sleepwalking with a gun, laughing manically into the empty night. She knows what it is to be a first-time mother, she tells Grace. Everyone goes a bit crazy the first six months. But Grace doesn’t want help – in the four walls of Jackson’s dilapidated childhood home, she is creating a world of her own, in which there are no rules or social etiquette.
Lawrence feels like the perfect choice for Grace, having been approached by Martin Scorsese first before reeling in Ramsay, who at first declined, having worked on themes of post-partum depression with We Need to Talk About Kevin. It was under the agreement that it would be focused on a “crazy love story” that she eventually joined as director. Perhaps there is a certain level of expectation in watching Lawrence parading around the house to Toni Basil’s Mickey on repeat, sticking her tongue out and licking the window absent-mindedly, undressing at the most inappropriate of times – would a relatively unknown cast have been more effective in bringing to the screen such a deeply personal, tumultuous tale? This is not to say that Lawrence’s performance is inadequate – on the contrary, she is perfectly mesmerising, as is Spacek, a particular standout as a grieving widow. It seems a shame almost that there wasn’t more of a wrapped-up storyline for the both of them – what an interesting turn it would have been for it to focus on a daughter and mother-in-law whose lives are so intertwined in their different types of grief. Nevertheless, Ramsay lives up to her word – Die My Love isn’t so much about Grace’s battle, but about Grace and Jackson’s battle. For better or worse, Jackson is there, even if his presence is not always desired, or if he provides the wrong type of support (it is clear a dog is not what was needed). In other words, the couple takes precedence. To doubts of infidelity while Jackson is on the road, Grace develops a strange relationship with a biker (LaKeith Stanfield), who drives past the house or hangs out in the barn. He is perhaps the first sign of fiction at play here – is Grace imagining him, especially when she encounters him as a different person, a frazzled father to a disabled child? Yet, while the blurred boundary is welcome and effective to begin with, it blurs so much in the final act that it is unclear what the repercussions or circumstances of Grace’s condition are anymore, making for a rather lengthy final act. There is some excellent chemistry at play here however, between Lawrence’s erratic behaviour, Pattinson’s helplessness, Spacek’s kindly gaze. It is a reminder that, despite disagreements and issues that each encounter, it does really take a village.
Die My Love screened at the London Film Festival.
