Die My Love: a Film Review

🎬 DIE, MY LOVE dir. Lynne Ramsay (2025)

📍seen at the cinema

★★★★★ 5/5: Reclaimed Gaze

Die, My Love, a surrealist thriller on a woman’s profound alienation as a new mother. Jennifer Lawrence's performance as Grace is exhilarating and offers a masterful performance, enthralling the audience throughout the film where she perfectly incarnates the experience of a woman feeling stuck in her body post-partum. The director, Lynne Ramsay, showcases the depth of grief for one’s past self and the protagonist’s animalistic search for inner peace. Grace’s main antagonist is herself. She is battling the feeling of numbness and her inner struggle of how to inhabit her new body post-birth as a new mother. I must say that as a viewing experience, Die My Love is not particular pleasant. It is a dissociative experience as it is disorienting by design. The film threads a non-lineal story arc from Grace’s point of view supplemented with series of surrealist images. The editing of this film is fragmented in a way that every time I thought it would end, it kept going which could almost stand as a metaphor for depression. The film frequently injects various hallucinations that pushes the viewer to decipher for themselves if those images actually happened or not. It almost feels like a memory inside a dream emanating from within Grace’s fractured psyche. The film follows a non-traditional trajectory that to some could be seen as non-sensical. It feels uncomfortable and exhausting yet, in my opinion, this is what make this film so unique and magnetic. As a spectator, you are engrossed and transported into the film as the images are just incredibly beautiful and feral.

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The portrayal of mental health and the concept of "giving space"

Motherhood is the core of the film. Grace is a wonderfully caring and adoring mother. However, her identity outside of being a mother is the heart of this film. Despite having limited dialogue which testifies to Grace’s isolation and loneliness, there are some incredibly marking lines that just highlight the pureness of Grace’s vulnerability… I can think of the scene when they are in the car and Jackson asks Grace where she is and she simply answers: ‘I’m right here, you just don’t see me’. This line encapsulates the heart of the film. The cause of that loneliness and pain is exacerbated by this lack of support and understanding from her family. Her suffering is met with indifference with her close family choosing to “give her space”. This ties greatly to Jackson’s mother's piece of parental advice to Grace is to let the baby “cry it out” as a regulatory technique. In this sense, Grace is essentially left to “cry it out” throughout the film. Grace has these big feelings that she doesn’t know how to regulate and she expresses them through tantrums in an attempt to be seen, have her needs met and for someone to come help soothe her. Jackson repeatedly rejects Grace’s bids for attention and care which reinforces the mental health crisis and their dysfunctional relationship cycle to devolve continuously and viciously. The scene where she reunites with Jackson after running away from their wedding is incredibly moving. There she is standing there looking almost childlike, helpless and scared, rubbing her arms with a giant gash on her forehead from when she bashed it into the mirror, longingly waiting for Jackson to come hug her and comfort her and instead he ignores her. This refusal to acknowledge her, and the subsequent submission as she just pathetically accepts the rejection and follows behind him to the car was so painful to watch. Mental health disorders are exacerbated with isolation. Jackson as a father and a husband is feckless in the sense that he is so purely inattentive to Grace's suffering and never tries to actively listen to her. Jackson is, intentionally or not, neglectful of both Grace and their child as seen with him repeatedly sleeping through their baby crying or dragging Grace out against her will for a drive and leaving their baby alone in the house.

The only semblance of understanding is seen in her dream sequence where Grace and Jackson’s demented father slow dance together in the forest, seeming like an embrace between varying forms of madness finding fleeting moments of mutual understanding and tenderness. Jackson’s mother provides mininal type of support, but Grace doesn't want to talk about it she wants to act on it. Simple affection from her husband could have solved some of these problems but it's like the second she has a child she turns into a mother in his mind and he doesn't have the same lust for her while her primal instincts and needs intensify. Motherhood has changed Grace, she is not the same anymore and all she wants is to be understood and accepted as who she is now.

Moreover, the scene of Grace wandering out of her room to her office in the middle of the night after having nursed the baby with one of her breasts still out is, to me, groundbreaking in cinema. This perfectly displays the nakedness of motherhood while also de-sexualising the female body. This scene also illustrates the daze that comes from exhaustion of having to give yourself completely to a tiny human whose whole bodily needs depend solely on you. Grace’s breastmilk dripping onto one of her pages which mixes with the ink is a beautiful depiction of her current self mixing with her past self who loved to write. The want for creativity but the energy being quite literally sucked away from you. Grace beautifully encapsulates this when she says she feels ‘stuck wanting to do something and nothing at all’. Everyone keeps asking her why she is no longer writing as she now has "so much time at home alone with the baby", a question that is beyond frustrating and frankly insensitive. This dismisses the mental burden and emotional load that mothers have that can cloud and drown out any ounce of creative energy. How can one write when you feel like an alien in your body. Pregnancy and birth are so normalised in society that society expects you to just carry on like you once were. Dismissing the actual bodily and psychological trauma of having to create and keep alive another human.

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The location of pain and domesticity

This film provides an interesting examination of marriage and the quiet unravelling that occurs when parenthood magnifies every fault. Having a child fundamentally alters the landscape between two people and pulling them into perilous and painful territory. The film begins with Jackson showing Grace the house he’s inherited from his uncle, making the push to move them from New York City to the middle of nowhere in the US somewhere. What began as the house representing a space for hope and excitement for a new beginning, transformed into Grace’s prison, the house becoming her cage. This then becomes an analysis on female domesticity as Grace essentially becomes a housewife after stopping writing post-birth and staying home. Grace is trapped and withering away at home alone with the baby. She goes off on these endless walks with her push-chair in these massive fields in countryside with no exact destination, almost like she’s trying to escape without realising it. Fragments of boredom, dissociation and a loss of motivation to create are the causes of her demise. She is left alone uninspired, left to decay by a husband who is oblivious and ignorant to her distress. Jackson took a naturally wild and free-spirited woman out of NYC and tried to domesticate her.  

As this film focuses solely on Grace’s perspective, all one is left with sequences that are indicative of how Lawrence's character feels. Scenes of her erratically dancing to rock music at home shows her nature to be ebullient and eccentric. Strands of her past self haunt the film and offer possibilities of who she might have been before. She’s quite literally going stir-crazy, gnawing at the bars of her enclosure when she licks the window or even when she jumps through the glass door. The film testifies to the experience of a husband who once embraced and fiercely loved her wild side, yet by displacing her to his hometown in his family house to be close to his dying father, attempts to mould her into a mummy homemaker, and expects her to comply with society norms. What once was a wildly free-spirited woman has turned into a literal feral animal once she realized she was trapped in this home with her child and a man. The film is ugly and witnesses Grace’s mourning of who she once was as well as who she thinks she has to be as a new mother. She constantly is “in heat” and always wants to roam around naked or on all fours. Her visions of Jackson crawling towards her could be seen as her longing for him to "get on her level", similar to how humans attempt contact with animals. Jackson couldn’t accept the defeat that he failed to domesticate her so their toxic cycle continues until she literally runs into the burning forest naked, symbolizing her freedom and rebirth like a phoenix. The incredible ending in Grace’s final line “enough”, demonstrates her decision to choose herself, to break away from her cage and walk into fire or freedom.

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The dog

The almost aggravatingly comical moment is when Jackson brings home a puppy to their home yet reproaches Grace for not taking care of it… The dog can serve as a symbol for Jackson not listening or considering Grace’s wishes. Him blind-siding Grace with the puppy, then dumping all the responsibility on her resembles his role as a father and a husband leaving the whole parenting burden on Grace. Moving her from NYC, isolating and abandoning her in the middle of nowhere in his family house and expecting her to make it a home. Jackson refuses to acknowledge the pain the dog is in from its injuries sustained in the car accident. Similar to how he refuses to acknowledge Grace’s suffering, hoping that by sweeping it under the rug and pretending that everything is fine that it will work itself out.

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Lack of an intersectional understanding of the figure of the Mother

I must say that this remains a very WHITE film with that side trope of her affair with her Black neighbour which was particular odd in my eyes. I understand that it is a more surrealist almost body horror fantasy and does not seek to offer a political lens on gendered racialised bodies. However, I would say it is not grounded in the reality of Grace's context. As this film revolves around Grace's psyche, it is hard to say if the affair actually happened or if it is a fantasy. We dip into different social classes when you enter Jackson's colleagues homes and then go back to the middle of nowhere countryside home. One does not really know what time period we are in nor is there any mention of politics. Their family is able to survive on a single income which is a privilege in itself and Grace's feral acts are treated as almost normal and not pathologised by others. Her privilege almost lies in her ability to act as crazy as she wants and still be considered normal, human. I wonder what this film would be like if we had a woman of colour as Grace. I would say that the critical reception of the film would be vastly different. Society is much less forgiving when exposed to women of colour's suffering and pain. Imperfection on screen is only allowed to a specific few. As people of colour's behaviours are so incredibly policed and monitored, especially in the middle of nowhere and in the US, I doubt realistically Grace's craziness would be as accepted. The truth is that women of colour are given less room for mistakes or failure. They are limited within the bounds of what is socially expected for them. Grace's eccentricity and messy nature is depicted with great care. The fact that we are only confronted with Grace's POV throughout the film forces this type of forced immersive experience that is quite distressing. It is a film that would make the audience leave feeling agitated. And I would say that this film really requires you to exercise your muscle of empathy a lot as Grace is very flawed and not agreeable at all. If it were an acress of colour as Grace, the critical reception I believe would be very much less empathetic. Motherhood codes are incredibly more sctrutinised when speaking of mothers of colour. Grace's privilege lies in her ability to stray from social norms and sidestep the frame of expectations without being arrested for instance. Her "craziness" is seen as a normal illustration of depression while a woman of colour acting this way would be received as a deviant or even perpetuating racist stereotypes. A White Grace's eccentricity can almost be seen as artistic for some as she is a writer while a woman of colour acting out this way would be much less forgiven by the audience, in my opinion. White Grace is feral, wild, her primal needs are hightened which is met with kindness and empathy by critics and the wider audience. A woman of colour Grace would open up to various sexualising and racialy biased readings. She would not be afforded the leniency and "grace"to make as much noise and mess she needs to feel whole as White Grace is given. Which is shame because mental health issues do not discriminate and a perspective on a women of colour's dealing with such pain would be interesting but cynically I have low faith in the global audience's ability to be critically receptive to such intersectional complexities without applying any racial bias or Hollywood studios to provide budget to the right productions that would treat this other Grace with the same care and respect.

Similarly, having Jackson played by a man of colour would change the audience's reception to him greatly. I have seen on many forums that Jackson is fairly excused for his feckless nature, yet if we had a man of colour in this role I believe that this forgiving gaze would be reversed for a discursive racist rhetoric vis-à-vis Jackson's neglectful behaviour. His actions would have a violent and racialised charge that the audience and the critics would attribute to him in a heartbeat. The whole idea of "he's just trying his best for his family" does not apply for men of colour. There is no room for them to fail or be bad without falling vicitim to racially charged stereotypes on their character.

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★★★★★ 5/5: Reclaimed Gaze

DIE MY LOVE is a visceral journey into the mind of a woman wrestling with the pain and isolation and love of becoming a mother. It’s a raw, anxious experience that might be too stylized for some, but it’s effective nonetheless thanks to Jennifer Lawrence’s fearless performance. Grace’s feral actions is seen as her destroying herself just to prove she exists. This film does force you to leave your judgement at the door as both of these characters are flawed. This film shows us the complexities of how to inhabit a body. The disconnected style and feral physical performances communicate the consequence of creation, what once was part of you and now exists outside of you. This film flawlessly illustrates profound alienation through the visual language of the aesthetics of revolution: seizing means of creation.

Despite it not including any form of intersectional lens on motherhood, Lynne Ramsay paints a vivid, intense, searing picture of raw emotional corporality. It’s not just a film about postnatal depression, it’s a portrait of genuine love left untended and abandoned. I left feeling hollow, but not empty. Depression can make those around us seem unrecognizable, but the moment we fail to recognize our loved ones is the moment we let them down. The film paints an oxymoronic experience of the practical reality of a dream nightmare experience, offering no tools of understanding just pushing you to fully immerse yourself in the journey of Grace.