Courtesy of the Cannes Film FestivalJennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson are stars in the “surreal” and “intense” study of postpartum depression, Lynn Ramsay, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Lynne Ramsay’s We We Need of Kevin is one of the most sizzling portraits in cinemas of women who have not challenged motherhood. And the extraordinary British director’s new film is almost an unofficial prequel. Ariana Harwicz’s acclaimed novel of the same name, Die, My Love, is a surreal, intense, and sometimes dark and hilarious exploration of postnatal depression, but it seems like it’ll be a while since there’s more to it elsewhere.
Jennifer Lawrence is better than ever as Grace, an aspiring author who moves from New York to the countryside with his partner Jackson. A couple’s new life can be idyllic. As the animal sex scene shows, they are in love fiercely, and their spacious, messy homes are surrounded by forests and meadows, so Grace has peace and freedom to write novels.
Still, the rat’s footprint skit in the opening scene is a warning that this dream home could become a nightmare. So when the couple has a boy and Jackson starts work a few days a week away from home, Grace is troubled by boredom, loneliness and sexual desires. Her situation then goes even further when Jackson returns with an untrained, constantly barking dog.
On death, my love should probably be shown to teenagers as a warning about how repeated, angry, alienated. Ramsay uses countless techniques for experts, including detailed sound design, persistent music, confused chronology, and strange dream sequences to convey the sense that grace is horribly drifting from reality.
What stops the film from being unbearable is that Lawrence is always tough and lively, even in the worst decline of the character. She does not ask us to sympathize with her. And the scripts can be sharp and interesting too. Jackson sees himself as a supportive partner, but he is the kind of guy who doesn’t turn off the raucous rock song between heartfelt and heart conversations. And Grace’s fatigue and resentment encourages her to do delicious and ironic things for those who have the courage to be kind to her.
Die, my love
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, Rakis Stanfield, Sissy Spacek
Not only does it build an unsettling American Gothic vibe, but the first half of the film contains all sorts of precursors that could soon be shockingly externalized in Grace’s internal conflict. Her habit of creeping up the meadow suggests dying by clutching a large kitchen knife. My love might be a novel film. The motorcyclist who continues to roa past the house suggests his identity hidden by the visor in the shade of his impact helmet, suggesting that the Home Invasion thriller is offshore. References to the suicide of the former House owner implies that the film could become a supernatural chiller about a cursed haunted house. And there is Jackson’s recent widow Mother Pam (Sissy Spacque). He went sleepwalking along the road carrying loaded rifles, not far, along the road that led from her home. The sequences shared by her and Grace create an interesting case in which the experience of adapting to birth is reflected by the experience of adapting to death. These sequences also promise that some kind of violent conflict is only a matter of time.
Unfortunately, none of these various precursors of Doom have developed into a storyline. There is an incident in this film, but it is essentially a mood work, not a drama with a plot, but one long, nervous breakdown. And my love is exhausted before it drifts into the final credits as the later scenes continue to repeat the themes of parenting that were so clear in the early scenes. Ramsay’s filmmaking flare lights the scene after the scene, but as fragments of the story, blurred reality and fantasy, you leave the urge to read the novel to find out what’s actually going on. The film may have conveyed the heroine’s boredom and confusion a little more effectively.
