Crawling on all fours like a cat in heat. Letting her own breast milk drip down onto an ink-pooled paintbrush. Rubbing her sex-starved crotch insatiably. Throwing herself through a glass-paned door. Never let it be said that Jennifer Lawrence doesn’t commit—especially when she’s playing a character who might just end up committed.
The semi-surreal, wildly expressionistic Die My Love, based on the 2017 novel by Ariana Harwicz, had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this past weekend, and left viewers wide-eyed at Lawrence’s no-holds-barred portrayal of Grace, a woman suffering from such severe post-partum depression she literally walks through fire. It’s the kind of head-turning star turn that Cannes audiences witnessed when Demi Moore brought The Substance here last year. No surprise that, within 24 hours of its debut, deep-pocketed distributor MUBI, which steered Moore to an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win, snapped up U.S. rights (and a few international territories) to the picture for $24 million.
Lynne Ramsay’s feral film, intensely experiential, also stars Robert Pattinson as Jackson, the hapless and helpless husband who doesn’t know how to stop Grace’s descent, preferring to disappear for days at a time on unspecified work trips—and leaving his wife alone with their 6-month-old boy, a cavernous house in the middle of nowhere, and an unruly pet mutt she never even wanted.
The duo, transplanted from New York City to an unspecified flat rural landscape, moved into a house previously owned by Jackson’s Uncle Frank, found dead from a mysterious self-inflicted wound. Just down the road is Jackson’s addled father Henry (Nick Nolte), suffering from Alzheimer’s and near death himself; as well as patient mother Pam (Sissy Spacek), who has a habit of sleepwalking outside with her shotgun.
A late addition to the Cannes competition lineup, and still fresh from the editing room, Die My Love is designed for maximum discomfort, with frenzied physicality, haunting cinematography, and a soundtrack full of chirping crickets, wild horses, buzzing flies, and incessant dog barking. But the unnerving drama still earned a 6-minute standing ovation from the black-tie crowd, which left Ramsay visibly shaken and deeply touched.
“Thanks so much!” the Scottish filmmaker chirped to the room in an exhausted Glaswegian accent. “C’mon—let’s get out of here. It’s a bit overwhelming.” She then marched out of the packed 2200-seat Grand Theâtre Lumière, where festival director Thierry Frémaux was waiting in the lobby with open arms and a huge smile. “Well, that went well,” she confided. “I’m mean, there are still things I’m like, ‘What the fuck? I’m going to change that.’”
Robert Pattinson came up behind, his face full of wonder, expressing his delight to Frémaux. “It’s very different from the last time I saw it,” said Patterson.
Lawrence, a co-producer on the film, was thrilled by the material the moment Martin Scorsese sent the book to her office and suggested it might be a great project for her. She agreed, and then approached Ramsay about possibly directing and adapting the material (she co-wrote the script with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch).
“I’ve wanted to work with Lynne Ramsey since I saw Ratcatcher, and I was just like, ‘There’s no way,’” Lawrence said at the film’s press conference the next day. “We took a chance and we sent it to her, and I cannot believe that we’re here with you and this happened!”
Lawrence first became a mother in 2022, and just had her second child earlier this year—experiences that clearly informed her decision to produce this film as well as how she would portray Grace. “It was really hard to separate what I would do as opposed to what she would do,” Lawrence said. “When I first read the book, it was so devastating and powerful. Lynne said it was dreamlike. I had just had my first child, and there’s not really anything like post-partum. It’s extremely isolating.”
Grace and Jackson’s move to the country, and not having any friends nearby, is by definition even more isolating for the troubled duo. “But the truth is, extreme anxiety and extreme depression is isolating no matter where you are,” she added. “You feel like an alien. And so it deeply moved me.”
Ramsay also saw the novel as being about more than post-partum depression, which helped her envision the film adaptation in more universal terms. “It was about post-natal, but It’s also about being stuck, and being stuck creatively—and dreams and fantasies and sex and passion,” she explained. “Jennifer sent it to me and I thought about it for a while. Maybe I can’t do this, but I’m gonna try, I’ll do an experiment. It’s like a love story, and that kind of gave me a way in.”
The tumultuous couple go from writhing on the floor in naked ecstasy to shouting matches and shocking moments of self-harm—at one point, Lawrence slams her head into a mirror; in another she scratches the wallpaper in her bathroom with such a frenzy that her fingers are bloody pulps. She’s tormented, and he’s paralyzed with indecision about how to make her feel better. He’s also frustrated to the point of chilly cruelty.
“I’m quite attracted to characters who are incredibly abrasive and quite obscure,” said Pattinson. “But there’s something quite universal and interesting for me, when you’re dealing with partners going through post-partum or any kind of mental illness or difficulties. Trying to deal with her isolation and trying to figure out what your role in the relationship is, is incredibly difficult—especially if you don’t have the vernacular. And he’s just kind of hoping the relationship will go back to what it was in its purest form, not understanding why it’s intruded into the relationship. I guess it’s a fear that everyone has.”
