The end goal of Lynn Ramsay’s Die My Love seems to be to generate discomfort in its audience. In that regard, it’s fairly successful, but outside of that scope, there is little else to find within the tumultuous tale of a relationship being pulled apart at the seams.
What’s Die My Love about?
Spanning several years, the relationship of a man, Jackson (Robert Pattinson, Mickey 17), and a woman, Grace (Jennifer Lawrence, No Hard Feelings), is seen unraveling.
Die My Love review
Jennifer Lawrence in a still from Die My Love. | Credit: Mubi
Jennifer Lawrence as Grace.
Credit: Mubi
Robert Pattinson as Jackson
Image Credit: Seamus McGarvey
Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson play a husband and wife struggling to maintain their relationship.
The works of John Cassavetes, especially A Woman Under the Influence, are a clear inspiration for the melodramatic story. Much like Mabel in A Woman Under the Influence, Grace begins to lose her hold on reality, suffering under the weighted responsibility of being a mother and wife, and exacerbated by mental health struggles and substance abuse. Gena Rowlands’ performance is impossible to match, but Jennifer Lawrence is phenomenal, drawing real emotions and eliciting strong and unnerving reactions from her audience.
Pattinson and Lawrence share true chemistry on the screen, ranging from loving glares to a shared vitriolic hatred for one another. Similar to Blue Valentine, the story attempts to show the ups and downs, highs and lows, of a toxic relationship at its best and worst. At the center of the toxicity is Grace, and the story is largely a vehicle for Lawrence to showcase her acting abilities. The Oscar-winning (Silver Linings Playbook) actress never fails to bring the most out of a character, proving time and time again that she’s one of the greatest working actresses today.
The film’s failings largely lie in its surface-level script, which fails to explore the cracks in the foundation of a failing marriage and chooses instead to focus on its fallout. The use of a non-linear timeline is a bit of a double-edged sword. It can be used to show the jarring contrast between different times in the couple’s lives, but if not used properly can feel limiting. In the case of Die My Love, it’s a little bit of both, and that’s not good enough. Jumping from one moment to the next feels like yet another hurdle keeping audiences from understanding and connecting to the relationship being explored. There’s nothing beneath its surface.
Related: Fact Check: Did Jennifer Lawrence Create a Troll TikTok Account Just to Rage-bait?
Is Die My Love worth watching?
Jennifer Lawrence is throwing a hundred miles an hour, and Pattinson is doing a fantastic job of keeping up. Their dynamic on screen is interesting, and they successfully capture the spark of both a loving relationship and one that is toxic and broken. But I would rather see them share the screen in a different film, or at least a different version of this one. Because I do believe there is something smart and worth exploring in Die My Love, but we never dig deep enough to find it.
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