Jennifer Lawrence puts herself through another mother! of a wringer with Die My Love. After playing a tortured muse whose reality comes undone in the 2017 Darren Aronofsky film, here she inhabits the itchy skin of a new mom who is suffering from an extreme case of postpartum depression. Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, You Were Never Really Here) directs, adapting a 2012 novel by Ariana Harwicz, with the help of co-screenwriters Alice Birch and Enda Walsh. Robert Pattinson appears as Lawrence’s increasingly bewildered partner, but this is Lawrence’s show—and as usual her nonverbal choices are what stand out. Whether she’s dropping her torso forward like a lifeless rag doll; idly kicking a loaded laundry basket as if it were curious roadkill; or aimlessly wandering about the house in the middle of the night after nursing her son, one breast still exposed, Lawrence gives a gripping performance that’s more about the inhabiting of a body than the delivery of words. There’s a great moment in which Pattinson is yammering on in the background of the shot and Lawrence petulantly flaps her mouth open and closed, silently, in the foreground. Even though she’s playing a woman who is suffering, Lawrence brings a playfulness to the screen that leavens the depths of misery in which Ramsay’s movies tend to wallow. Die My Love still ends in despair, to be clear—envisioned with the heavy symbolism Ramsay also prefers—but Lawrence makes the journey more intriguing than usual.
(11/13/2025)
