Near the climax of Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, two assassins––one well-dressed but dying, the other ragged but definitely alive––laid together on a kitchen floor, their hands lightly touching as Charlene’s “Never Been to Me” drifted in from a nearby radio, the lyrics barely escaping the wounded man’s mouth. That shock of counterpoint elevated what was, until then, a clinically well-executed revenge picture into something approaching the sublime. Ramsay plays that card again with less-convincing results in her long-awaited follow-up Die My Love, a visceral, coiled film about a woman in the throws of a mental breakdown. As ever, Ramsay’s soundtrack choices are equal-parts fun and unpredictable, not least David Bowie’s “Kooks” on a car radio or the director herself warbling an acoustic cover of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” over the closing credits––fitting choice for a work of toxic love and the things we do to our better halves, with little joy in the division.
Die My Love‘s purest moment of catharsis comes at the very beginning, where a noisy guitar song sets the scene for a hot, heavy, coarsely edited sex scene between our doomed lovers. Their names are Grace and Jackson and they’re played by Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, who––despite some provocative choices over the years––have rarely exuded this kind of carnal physicality onscreen. That brazen energy has been a hallmark of Ramsay’s cinema ever since Ratcatcher landed in Un Certain Regard in 1999, announcing the Glaswegian as a new and vital voice in British cinema. That remains the director’s only original screenplay; for various reason, those who revere her have had to wait patiently for each subsequent project. It will be eight years next week since Here closed the Cannes competition, and while no work is responsible for an audience’s expectations, it’s difficult to watch Die My Love and not think of similar films––most glaringly Lawrence’s performance in Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, but also Mary Bronstein’s awfully recent, Rose Byrne-led If I Had Legs I Would Kick You.
Die My Love is based on Ariana Harwicz’s debut novel, which is said to have been discovered by Martin Scorsese before finding its way to Lawrence, who then sought Ramsay to direct. As if in tribute to the late, great Gena Rowlands, Lawrence gives her most formidable performance in years as a woman under the influence, a young mother whose bipolar behavior is time and again explained to her as postpartum depression. Not that anyone therein takes much notice of others’ concerns. These include her variably present husband, who might be having an affair, and an empathetic mother-in-law played by none other than Sissy Spacek, who knows a thing or two about off-kilter screen mothers and seems to relish having Lawrence as a sparring partner. Their scenes are amongst the best Die My Love has to offer, but their comfortable rapport only accentuates the strange lack of chemistry whenever Lawrence and Pattinson exchange dialogue.
The script is credited to Ramsay, Alice Birch (Normal People), and Irish playwright Enda Walsh, a formidable trio that makes inflexible tone and dream-logic indulgences all the more baffling. I would say it’s this director’s weakest film, but when you’ve never made a bad one that probably doesn’t say a lot. Whatever the case, Die My Love remains worthwhile––not least for the way Lawrence prowls around the long grass, one hand wielding a knife and the other down her jeans, giving everything onscreen a dangerous, sexual charge. This is still very much a Lynne Ramsay film. Let’s hope it’s not another eight years before the next.
Die My Love premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and will be released by MUBI.