Nothing can get an audience’s attention like a woman wading through emotional strife. Movie theaters have seen many examples of this, and the latest example is "Die My Love" about a young woman who gives birth to her first child and is pushed to the brink of sanity.
"Die My Love" is adapted from a debut Spanish novel of the same name by Ariana Harwicz. The novel was first published in Argentina in 2012 and was then translated for an English language publication in 2017 telling an intimate story of motherhood, isolation, and fear.
After moving into an old house in the remote countryside, a passionate man and woman conceive a child and start building a family together. But giving birth to their child and raising it mostly by herself, this new mother experiences daunting loneliness, sexual frustration, and boredom causing her to feel increasingly trapped and agitated. As her behavior becomes more erratic, it also becomes more dangerous with shocking moments of violence.
Jennifer Lawrence ("No Hard Feelings," 2023) plays this unstable wife/mother and attacks every scene with a courageous bravado, adding a few touches of sensitive hopelessness. She’s terrifically unpredictable and physically extreme. Crawling on the ground, barking like a dog, and scratching the bathroom walls, her descent into madness feels like a transformation into a wild animal like a wolf or a mare. This theme of female transformation gives "Die My Love" connections to other female psychological dramas like "Black Swan" with Natalie Portman (2010) or "Nightbitch" with Amy Adams (2024).
"Die My Love" is a startling and uncommon portrayal, not only of a woman’s inner mental journey, but more broadly of post-partum depression. It also beautifully captures the looks and feelings of mentally ill people and their marginalized lives far from cities, towns, or communities.
I know Jennifer Lawrence is getting some Oscar buzz for her wild performance, but let’s not forget Robert Pattinson ("Mickey 17," 2025) as her disheveled strained husband. He usually shines in flashy character roles, but he is equally interesting in this film trying to support his unraveling wife but simply not knowing how. He’s like a plain sturdy banister or corner post of a house working to keep his family safe.
Many film lovers will categorize this as art house, so because of that, "Die My Love" is not an experience for casual movie watchers. It’s abstract, non-linear, and full of illusion. These illusions make this woman's rampant cerebral state increasingly mysterious. You don't know what is real, what is a dream, or what is a hallucination. Viewers are enveloped even more into this woman's world, because the dreams and hallucinations are never resolved or explained.
Scottish director and screenwriter Lynne Ramsay ("We Need to Talk About Kevin," 2011) is known for telling stories balancing raw naturalism and dream-like settings with little importance on verbal dialogue. Her past films "Morvern Callar" (2002) and "You Were Never Really Here" (2017) are strong examples of this. So she's a perfect fit for "Die My Love" creating serious visual poetry, untamed emotions, and in some moments, honest cinematic art.
Her directing style is less a tightly fitted continuous narrative and more akin to a ragged patchwork of vignettes. Watching "Die My Love" felt like watching the making of a mosaic or an impressionist painting. Watching this film also reminded me of the 1974 drama, "A Woman Under the Influence" and the 2017 allegory, "Mother!"
I know avoiding a traditional narrative structure and going so hard into "artistic" territory makes a film like this less accessible to a mainstream audience. I thought to myself multiple times during this, "Now what is actually happening here?" I agree it's strange, obscure, and singular.
But that's often how mental illness feels, and this director is not afraid to put viewers through it. I didn't walk away from "Die My Love" thinking it's the artistic triumph of the year, but I'm glad I saw it, because it reminds us how films can extend beyond the boundaries of storytelling.
