Lynne Ramsay, the writer-director of Die My Love, has never been a filmmaker to tread softly around contentious material. Just look at her adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin or the visceral character study You Were Never Really Here, starring Joaquin Phoenix.
Hers is cinema as catharsis and her latest film is just that. Joining the ranks of a contemporary vanguard of high drama spearheaded by filmmakers such as Andrea Arnold, Mary Bronstein, Coralie Fargeat and Emerald Fennell, this fraught and sophisticated drama is part emotional rollercoaster, part kitchen sink drama and part a heightened version of a life that audiences can gravitate towards, despite the seemingly impenetrable nature of the trauma. Or maybe because of it.
Dealing with a truth rather than the truth, the film – much like the arthouse realism of Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter and Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island – taps into audiences’ appetites for a gritty, realistic form of cinema.
As the success of the new wave of high drama shows, many viewers are bored by homogenised blockbusters and want to escape the conformity and predictability of algorithmic comfort viewing. As the emotions being experienced on screen, if not the actual events, mirror their own, audiences are given the authenticity they crave.
The approach here is aided by the casting of the two Hollywood leads who appear to delight in remaining unfiltered and authentic in the public eye, which makes them perfect for the transgressive nihilism of Die My Love.
Jennifer Lawrence plays Grace, a struggling writer and new mother, as she experiences a mental breakdown in an isolated country house with her partner, Jackson, played by Robert Pattinson. This is a character-driven examination of postpartum psychosis, as Grace battles spiralling mental health, self-destructive behaviour, marital tension and a fear of entrapment, exacerbated by an ineffective, frequently absent partner.
Lawrence has never been better. As in Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, this is a raw, brutally honest performance from someone who has had to live up to the expectations of voracious teen fandom. Much has been said about her brave performance, but this is so much more than revealing naked flesh. Lawrence is baring her soul on celluloid; she has said she drew from her own experiences following the birth of her first child.
Pattinson also used his own experiences as a new father and the helplessness he often felt. He’s no stranger to teen adulation himself, thanks to the Twilight saga. But he has since made a concerted effort to gravitate towards auteurs and indie cinema. From a David Cronenberg double bill of Cosmopolis and Maps to the Stars to Claire Denis’ High Life, Benny and Josh Safdie’s Good Time and Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, he has delighted in playing against type. Together, the two leads work wonders.
Their casting is a statement in itself: Ramsay’s typically subtle style of storytelling positions Die My Love at the forefront of a new cinematic wave of realism that moves away from traditional plot-driven narratives towards a more impressionistic and observational approach.
Less is more as she refuses to spoon-feed her audience an easy answer. And by focusing on the character’s psychological struggle, the film tells us more about our actual lives than we would care to admit. The powerful experience of watching Die My Love is a testament to the essential rise of high drama.
