Die My Love (dir. Lynne Ramsay)

by Jack Martin | Nov 5, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 118 mins

UK Distributor: Mubi

UK Release Date: 7 November 2025

WHO’S IN DIE MY LOVE?

Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, Gabrielle Rose, Debs Howard, Sarah Lind, Marcus Della Rosa

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Lynne Ramsay (director, writer, composer), Alice Birch and Enda Walsh (writers), Andrea Calderwood, Justine Ciarrocchi, Jennifer Lawrence, Thad Luckinbill, Trent Luckinbill, Martin Scorsese, Molly Smith and Lisa Walsh (producers), Raife Burchell and George Vjestica (composers), Seamus McGarvey (cinematographer), Toni Froschhammer (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A young couple (Lawrence and Pattinson) find their relationship crumbling from isolation…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON DIE MY LOVE?

Most if not all supporting characters in director and co-writer Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love dismiss the rapidly declining mental health of Jennifer Lawrence’s protagonist Grace, a recent mother, as nothing more than a bit of common postpartum depression. As neither a parent nor a woman, I cannot possibly comment on whether the psychological effects of postpartum are accurately reflected by the increasingly wild and animalistic actions that Lawrence displays throughout. But as a relatively sane person, I am all but certain that this kind of behaviour is far beyond post-natal psychosis and well into full-blown insanity, a fact that Ramsay certainly seems aware of to a certain degree, but not enough to properly address it other than just constantly showing it.

Her film, an adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s novel of the same name, is certainly unflinching in its portrayal of deeply concerning and quite possibly even dangerous mental illness, but at the same time it keeps a lot of its true ideals firmly under wraps within an overwhelmingly arthouse style that provides little emotional engagement to support its grandiose approach.

Ramsay, who co-wrote the script with Alice Birch and Enda Walsh, begins with Lawrence’s Grace and her partner Jackson (Robert Pattinson) acquiring a dilapidated house in the remote Montana countryside that previously belonged to Jackson’s dead-by-suicide uncle. Despite the rundown conditions of the house itself, Grace and Jackson seem happy enough to further bond with one another, especially in the physical sense, but as soon as Grace gives birth to their son, their dynamic rapidly changes. With Jackson often away on vague job assignments, Grace is often stuck with looking after the baby, with Jackson’s mother Pam (Sissy Spacek) on standby down the road, who herself is going through a bout of domestic stress from looking after her dementia-ridden husband Harry (Nick Nolte). Grace, though, turns out to have it far worse as she starts acting erratic in and around the house, partly in response to Jackson’s inconsiderate actions like getting an endlessly yapping dog without consulting her, but also from her lack of pleasure which she resorts to fantasies about motorcyclist Karl (LaKeith Stanfield) in order to satisfy herself.

But really, Die My Love is primarily about this person going more and more off the deep end, to where straightforward sex won’t be anywhere near enough to help treat it, and it’s genuinely quite uncomfortable to watch. Ramsay’s nihilist avant-garde approach emphasises Grace’s mental breakdown with a disturbingly unhinged lens, captured by Seamus McGarvey’s muted cinematography that’s boxed inside of the classic 1.375:1 Academy ratio, while Toni Froschhammer’s editing frames scenes of sudden self-inflicted violence like they’re jump-scares in a Blumhouse horror movie. The director lets her actors, especially Lawrence, off the leash in every possible sense, as they engage in rambunctious and sometimes unpredictable acts like crawling around on all fours like domestic pets, scratching the bathroom walls until their fingernails are covered in blood, covering the floor of said bathroom in every single lotion one can find, and even suddenly crashing through a glass door out of nowhere. There’s enough boundary-pushing debauchery to almost make it feel like if Terrence Malick made Lars von Trier’s The Idiots, though comparatively speaking Ramsay’s film might seem a bit more normal than whatever the hell that version would have been.

Quickly, however, it becomes apparent that Ramsay is less interested in actually exploring the depths of Grace’s declining mental health, at least on a substantial level, and more on just presenting it as it is to almost exploitative levels. There’s rarely a moment where she and Pattinson’s Jackson have an actual conversation about their issues, so it’s hard to engage with either character as they seem to drift further and further apart without every truly seeming as though they understand one another or what they’re going through. Instead of offering any real insight, it further distances the viewer from actual empathy towards these people who keep ignoring the blatant signs of borderline personality disorder that Grace is displaying until she’s too far gone. The film’s loose structure, which sometimes opts for non-linear storytelling before going right back to the film’s present, also makes it extremely confusing as to how far we are meant to be in the story, leading to several moments where the film could easily cut to black on a satisfactory note but instead keeps on going, adding to the frustration that one gets while watching it.

Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy Die My Love all that much. Having heard some interesting things about its depiction of mental health, much of it having to do with Lawrence going completely off the rails in ways the actor has never expressed before, I was disappointed to find this is much more of a performative spectacle than an actual thoughtful dive into the topic. That may well have been Ramsay’s point all along, but it doesn’t make it any less easy to sit through since it often feels like an endless display of arthouse lunacy with no true substance to back itself up, like you’re at a carnival in the insane asylum and the star attraction of the freak show is a clearly deranged inmate who you wouldn’t really want wandering about in society within any capacity.

Admittedly, since that star attraction is Jennifer Lawrence, who is very good in the movie, it sits a little easier. But otherwise, much like her character’s unsatisfactory love life, Die My Love just rubbed me the wrong way.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Die My Love is an unflinching yet substantially empty depiction of severe mental illness which, despite some intriguing filmmaking by Lynne Ramsay and a truly go-for-broke lead turn by Jennifer Lawrence, feels more exploitative than it does contemplative of the subject matter.