Cannes #78 - “Die My Love” Review

Lynne Ramsay comes in swinging with a jagged, intoxicating fever dream that grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go. Die My Love is a razor-sharp portrait of postpartum despair, psychological free-fall, and the quiet, daily violence of domestic life. Bold and uncompromising, it’s hard to believe that it’s adapted from Ariana Harwicz’s 2012 novel, as you’d swear it was born on celluloid. This isn’t just a film about going mad: it’s one that feels like going mad.

Jennifer Lawrence gives a career-best performance as Grace, a young mother exiled to a remote Montana countryside home with her partner Jackson (Robert Pattinson). The film opens in a blaze of erotic energy, only to pull away the rug right after. The sex dies. A baby arrives. And suddenly, Grace is left alone with a screaming infant. Lawrence plays her like a woman dancing on the edge of a razor blade, a magnetic ticking bomb as feral as terrifyingly alive.

Ramsay, the undisputed poet of maternal chaos, constructs the film like a slow-boiling panic attack. Every choice, from the oppressive sound design to the jagged, staccato editing, works to keep you trapped inside the labyrinth of Grace’s disintegrating psyche, delivering one of, if not the, strongest films of the year. And Ramsay never stoops to cliché. Her direction is brutal and beautiful in equal measure, without ever condescending to predictable, overdramatised scenes No hand-holding. No melodrama. Just raw, sustained tension.

It’s hyperrealistic like an intimate documentary, like a mirror to our own demons, yet dripping with cinematic flair. And we need to talk about music: from offbeat lullabies to needle drops that feel like emotional grenades, the soundtrack slaps hard, deepening the dread and twisting the knife.

Every frame feels dangerous. A primal scream in cinematic form. Not for the faint-hearted, nor the TikTok-scrolling casual.

Also: Lynne Ramsay definitely hates children. Confirmed.

4/5