DIE MY LOVE (B+) - The feral director Lynne Ramsay recruits a star to match her ferocity, as she unleashes Jennifer Lawrence onto the screen as a writer and unfulfilled wife who gradually descends into an apparent psychosis.
Lawrence dives deep into the role of Grace, who is dragged to rural Montana by her layabout husband, Jackson (Robert Pattinson), to inhabit an old house willed by Jackson's uncle, just down the road from her mother-in-law. Soon they are joined by an adorable baby, which can't quash Grace's carnal cravings, which Jackson mostly ignores. Grace is also nagged by Jackson and others who wonder why she has not returned to writing. The husband disappears on work trips, leaving her feeling abandoned (but apparently not trapped with the baby) and bored (and perhaps imagining infidelities), and when he is around, he does stupid things like adopt a loud, annoying dog for Grace to have to clean up after.
Ramsay, working with two writers to adapt a book by Ariana Harwicz, presents this as more than a case of post-partum depression. Grace's woes are nuanced and complicated, and perhaps they cannot be explained at all. Several scenes show her on hands and knees, slinking like a panther. More than once she hinges at the hips and flops over in half, like a rag doll (or a fentanyl addict). She claws at the wallpaper in the claustrophobic shack. Lawrence's blank face speaks volumes in a simple shot of Grace letting her forehead fall against a glass door. At times Grace wields weapons -- a butcher's knife, a shotgun -- but she is not a danger to those around her; she's a conundrum.
We see flashbacks of Grace trying to communicate with Jackson's senile father (Nick Nolte) and back in the present day failing to click with Jackson's mother, Pam (a compelling Sissy Spacek, reminding us that she invented this genre). There is just no one on her wavelength -- not even her readers -- unless you count a mystery motorcyclist (Lakeith Stanfield) who could just be a figment of her imagination, out there in nowheresville.
Ramsay is known for her gritty character studies, like Tilda Swinton coming to grips with a psychopathic son in "We Need to Talk About Kevin," or her masterpiece about a young woman (Samantha Morton) who thinks nothing of stealing her dead partner's novel in "Morvern Callar." But she also be off-key, like with the intense "You Were Never Really Here" from 2017. With "Die My Love" (only her fifth feature), she brings out amazing interplay between Lawrence and Pattison, some of it certainly improvised. They are the kind of performances that haunt actors for months or years afterward. But Ramsay also trips a few Stephen King tropes by wallowing in the psychosis of an anti-hero with writer's block or just a plain old crazy chick in a stylized horror movie.
The film struggles to pin down a raison d'etre, even if it is compelling visually and propelled by an eclectic soundtrack. (The couple has a turntable and a fun album collection.) Maybe it worked better as a novel, but across two hours on screen it can feel jumbled. (The flashbacks can be confusing.) The film begins and ends with an inferno, and in between Lawrence burns like an out-of-control wildfire. Yet there were plenty of times when Grace came across as the rational one surrounded by soulless zombies. Few can match the passion and intensity of the filmmaker and star, but were Ramsay and Lawrence even on the same page about the story they were trying to tell and the point they were trying to make?
BONUS TRACKS
The soundtrack is wide-ranging and worth the price of admission itself. Ramsay wrote some songs with George Vjestica and Raife Burchell, and sings here on "Fire," which opens the movie:
The film is also bookended by renditions of "In Spite of Ourselves" by John Prine and Iris Dement:
There's David Bowie's "Hunky Dory" deep cut "Kooks":
And finally, some groovy '60s hip-swinging, "Paladium (The Hip)" by Liz Brady:
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