“Die My Love” Is Smaller Than Life
Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson work hard to infuse this intense drama about marriage and motherhood with a sense of reality. Sometimes ignorance can be a benefit—as when I watched Lynne Ramsay’s "Die My Love" without knowing it was adapted from a novel.
Throughout the film, I felt frustrated by the lack of a detailed inner life for the protagonist, Grace, played by Jennifer Lawrence. Later, reading Jia Tolentino’s profile of Lawrence in this magazine, I discovered the film’s source: a novel by Argentine writer Ariana Harwicz. This book is a raw, intimate, and fiery first-person narrative.
“That book, quoted in the piece, is a first-person narrative, intimately confessional and expressively aflame.”
Upon reading the novel’s passages, I sensed a stronger, more compelling film hidden beneath the one I had seen. The movie’s emptiness exposed a fundamental failure to fully adapt the original material.
I would call "Die My Love" misguided if it did not focus primarily on Grace’s emotional turmoil in the months after childbirth.
In the beginning, Grace and her husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson) move into a new house, a fixer-upper in his rural hometown. This home carries the heavy legacy of his late uncle Frank, who died by suicide.
“At the start, Grace and her husband, Jackson, arrive at their new house, a fixer-upper in his rural hometown that comes with weighty baggage: it formerly belonged to his uncle Frank, who recently died by suicide.”
The film captures the challenges of new parenthood yet falls short of evoking the profound emotional depth found in the original novel.
Author’s summary: The film “Die My Love” struggles to capture the emotional intensity and inner complexity of its source novel, resulting in a portrayal of motherhood that feels incomplete and underdeveloped.