Jennifer Lawrence incendiary in this tale of motherhood and depression

Die my love
★★★½
CTC. 118 minutes

British director Lynne Ramsay has never shied away from emotional extremes. Neither is Jennifer Lawrence and Die my loveThe two come together to create a provocative effect.

The film is adapted from the book by Argentine author Ariana Harwicz, whose literary special features women struggling to meet the demands of marriage and motherhood. And the most remarkable piece of information about his journey to the big screen is the fact that Martin Scorsese is a member of a book club. It was the club’s discovery of the novel that led him to bring it to Lawrence’s production company.

Ramsay later joined the team, although he was initially hesitant, believing he had previously gone down a similar path in his film of Lionel Shriver’s book: We Need to Talk About KevinTilda Swinton plays a woman who cannot bond with her child. But Lawrence’s Grace, the mother in this movie, feels very different. Her baby is the only positive thing in her life. And his descent into clinical depression does not cause him to collapse into blank-eyed exhaustion. This leads to an explosion of violence that reduces those around him to shocked silence.

The book takes place in a French village. The film transplants the narrative to a similar corner of rural America where Grace’s husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson) grew up. With great insensitivity to his wife’s character and temperament, he brought her to a rundown house that had once belonged to his uncle Frank, neglecting to tell her that Frank had shot himself there. He also gifts her with a chatty dog ​​who urinates all over the house, chews pillows, and keeps her awake howling all night.

The script shuffles scenes from Grace’s life like a deck of cards, with no regard for timeline or plot-building conventions. It’s up to us to piece together the clues and make them into a coherent whole. This may be a tall order, and may leave an important question or two unanswered, but the intermingling of memories, dreams, and the mundane realities of Grace’s household routines reflects her feverish, hallucinatory mood. We certainly get a clear picture of her relationship with Jackson, as their once fun and passionate sex life turns into indifference on his part, and frustrated longing on his part.

There’s a poignant contrast to this in the marriage of Jackson’s parents, Pam (Sissy Spacek) and Harry (Nick Nolte). Harry, who has dementia, is nearing the end of his life, and when he finally escapes, Pam is distraught. Grace liked him too. In his rare moments of lucidity, he shows signs that he understands her better than anyone else.

There are temptations and distractions in his environment. Ramsay’s direction keeps both the beauty and oppressiveness of the landscape alive, with its long, dusty roads seemingly leading to nowhere and the lushness of the nearby forests contrasting with their green depths and slanting shafts of sunlight.