Die My Love

Quite disappointed

Grace and Jackson move into Jackson's uncles house who died a while back. They are madly in love and we skip time to seeing them have a kid. The shift is immediate, Grace seems to feel not wanted, not comfortable in her body, not connected with Jackson, not right. Things spiral as her emotions swing, Jackson is distant and their child is the only thing acting normal.

Super disappointed, I respect the message of postpartum depression and it's excellently acted by Jennifer but the movie lacks anything bar acting. The acting is phenomenal but the movie is bland.

It actually becomes annoying the decision making, I understand Rob gives Jen time and he's beyond understanding yet his coping mechanism is cheating. They are flawed but it's hard to know if her personality prior made this so severe.

A loaded movie with deep messages yet on the surface it's bland and should have ended 30 minutes ago, 4/10.

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).

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.

This is a very good move. It's also an awful movie. Jennifer Lawrence acts the heck out of it - seriously good work. It's a huge rule that could have been cartoonish but she gives it nuance and depth. Robert Pattinson isn't quite as good but he holds his own.

Postpartum depression is not a topic I've seen done before, surely because it makes us confront uncomfortable things about mothers, who we'd rather idealize. So I give the producers a lot of credit for tackling the subject.

But it's about an unlikable woman going through miserable times, causing havoc in her wake. Of course people aren't going to like that.

My only possible criticism is that the portrayal of mental illness didn't seem fully authentic to me. But I say "possible" because I'm not a mental health professional and obviously I have not had postpartum depression.

But, the protagonists problems weren't only postpartum depression but that pushes her over the edge. I'll guess that's how it usually works.

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.