Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) are young and in love. When Jackson is left a house in his home town of Montana they move in with Grace expecting their first child. But then Grace begins to spiral, left alone with a child, suffering from post-partum depression and slowly going insane. 

Die My Love is another incredibly powerful fever dream from Lynne Ramsay. Ramsay’s output has been less than prolific with this being only her fifth feature film in a career spanning just over a quarter of a century. Her previous film, 2017’s You Were Never Really Here shares themes with this. The manner in which the sense of reality blurs and suicidal themes are covered are very much present in both features. How their protagonists deal with those thoughts are where things fundamentally diverge. 

The film drops you right in the middle of Grace and Jackson’s house move by way of a hazy montage and slowly drip feeds you information about both their lives and Jackson’s family. His parents, played with gravitas by Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte are stuck firmly in old fashioned ways and give little support to Grace. In fact the entire family seem to be actively oblivious to her woes seemingly just hoping it is a phase that will pass. Jackson makes matters worse by thinking a puppy will help, but it only piles more misery on Grace as it is untrained and uncontrollable. 

Personally I found Die My Love brutally uncomfortable to watch. It prompted incredibly strong emotions of both anger and pain. I wanted to scream at some of the characters involved and I was heart broken by Grace’s predicament. Jennifer Lawrence delivers a tour de force performance which apparently was helped by the fact that she was pregnant whilst filming. The manner in which she portrays her character’s sense of isolation and pain is phenomenally well realised. The sense of the inner turmoil of Grace wanting to try to connect back with her world but also run as far away as possible is very, very real.

Die My Love is a harrowing and difficult watch, but also one that really taps into the pain of depression via a performance from Jennifer Lawrence that will remind us all just how good an actress she is.