Die My Love

Die, My Love? More like Day, For Night.

I'll give it this. The film taps into something authentic when it comes to looking at the impulsiveness that comes with depression. When it's jarring by showing something destructive happening, you feel it, and it feels real. Also, Jennifer Lawrence is very good, even though she doesn't really have an actual film to work with.

This thing is abysmally written and paced. A good performance and a certain honesty about mental illness - and how it feels - can only take this so far. There are parts of this film where it was almost like someone was trying to kneecap those somewhat redeeming qualities. You can have a film that's unpredictable and that shows a sense of psychological deterioration, but you still need pacing or a sense of momentum/escalation.

Die My Love has none of that, and whatever it's trying to be beyond a depiction of depression (and it is trying to be other things; it has to, with a runtime of about two hours), it fails. There's a randomness that doesn't feel clever or particularly purposeful; more just lazy. But I also thought Lynne Ramsay's previous film, You Were Never Really Here, was smug and kind of frustrating, so take my take with a decent amount of salt (We Need to Talk About Kevin was good, though).

Please stop casting Jennifer Lawrence in these kinds of roles: impatient, grumpy, aggressive, unstable, rude, crazy, and out of control. Her performances feel repetitive and boring. She is a good actress, but can she be given a different kind of role? I also believe this character would feel stronger if it were played by another actor. I kept seeing echoes of her previous films in this one.

As for the ending, the fire imagery feels forced and cliché. I couldn't enjoy the film, and the male lead didn't really have much room to develop his character either.

Despite its committed performances, occasionally intriguing choices and generally quite gorgeous - and delightfully textured - cinematography, very little about Lynne Ramsay's 'Die My Love (2025)' worked for me, and I'm not sure why. It's definitely well-crafted in almost every area, and it knows what it's doing and does it exactly how it wants to, but it's honestly pretty boring. It says everything it's going to say by the halfway point, and it just keeps going. It's the kind of film that I feel as though I should've liked, especially since my brother - whose taste in cinema is almost identical to mine - genuinely enjoyed it, but I just don't and I can't lie about it. It doesn't move me, it doesn't work its way under my skin, it doesn't excite or delight or even frustrate me. It just plays out in front of me. I can tell it's quite good in its own way, but it simply doesn't connect with me and I'm pretty sure it's not just because I don't have first-hand experience of the subject matter. There have been plenty of movies about people and places and feelings and actions entirely unfamiliar to me, and many of them have found their way into my heart and touched me on a deep level. I'm aware that this kind of reads more as an apology than a review, but I simply can't quite put my finger on why I don't like this feature and therefore don't feel comfortable completely condemning it. It's exactly what it wants and needs to be, but it isn't for me. Sometimes, that's just the way it is I suppose.

I'm a huge fan of both Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson. Her willingness to go beyond for a role. His eclectic film choices. They play a couple (Grace and Jackson) in the new movie DIE MY LOVE. This could've been so much better. Going into it, I thought it was about postpartum depression, but there's clearly something more going on with Grace. She can go from 0 to 100 in a blink of an eye. The couple moves into Jackson's father's house, who passed away. They quickly have a son, then Grace starts to mentally deteriorate. My problem with this is that they show you a few flashbacks of their relationship, and Grace seems to be at the same level of volatility as the rest of the film. I understand postpartum depression is a very real and not really talked about disease, but it can't be this bad. Director Lynne Ramsey has Lawrence doing some wild and feral things, which she absolutely goes for here. The people around her walk on eggshells, trying to figure out the best way to help her. Jackson is too calm for his own good. His mother Pam (Sissy Spacek) tells it like it is, but she has her own thing she's not dealing with. His Uncle Harry (Nick Nolte) barely talks but has some common ground with Grace, which is a great moment in a sea of misery and despair. I didn't like being inside Grace's mindset, which this film does pretty well. I wasn't sure what was real or not. I kept questioning every choice somebody made. I appreciate Lawrence's commitment to the role and the visual flair on display here, but the script is very messy and has things in it that seem just there to add random shock value. I'm sure DIE MY LOVE will resonate with some women, but not me.

I just couldn't enjoy this film. I found the flick to be pretentious and the story jumps the gun far too often for the plot to hold any weight from the message being conveyed.

Yes, the film has some gorgeous cinematography and the acting is great, but that is about where the good stops for this one. The story goes absolutely nowhere. In about the last quarter of the film, I had felt like I finally got a grip on what Jennifer Lawrence's character was going through and why she kept doing these crazy things to herself, and I had thought, what a perfect way to end this film. Then it continued for another 25 minutes and lost me again with the meaning behind the film. It was as frustrating as seeing Lawrence's pregnant belly shrink and unshrink throughout the film, at intervals that make no sense.

The best part of the film is easily Jennifer Lawrence's acting. She was what made the film, at least somewhat, entertaining. Not a whole lot of a transformation for herself, she is doing a lot of what she did in 'Mother!' here as well, but it works in the film's favor. The actor who should not have been in this is Robert Pattinson. Very miscast role. It's not that he's a bad actor, it's that his acting is dry and emotionless. This role required someone with a more tender screen presence. Had they stuck with the idea I had thought they were going with, he would've been just fine, but, again, then the movie went on for another 25 minutes, making you feel bad for his character, and obliterated that idea out of my head.

Overall, I couldn't recommend it. The meaning and emotion that could have been are all lost in this messy soup of a film. The acting is great and the cinematography is a stand out, but the lack of a cohesive plotline, an ending that dragged on and on, and the very miscast husband pushed this film all the way to the ground by the end of it. A shame, a daring and provocative performance just wasted because of somebody's idea of 'avent garde elevated cinema'.

2 dead loves out of 5.