The Animalistic Tale Within Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love
© Die My Love (2025)
Magical realism and Lynne Ramsay go hand in hand. Her films carry a painfully real yet esoteric feel, never without attention to sensory details. In both We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012) and Morvern Callar (2002), two of my favourite works of hers, she finds a way to fold fantasy in the most meagre circumstances. With Die My Love, Ramsay lifts this up to a psychologically subversive level, making the eight year wait (after her 2017 film You Were Never Really Here) worth it.
On the third day of the 52nd edition of Film Fest Ghent, a packed cinema gets ready to witness Ramsay’s long-awaited latest work. Adapted from the 2012 novel by Ariana Harwicz, the story is an intense study of a woman living in the countryside with her husband and their newborn child, descending into madness. After giving birth to her son, she spirals into a bipolar disorder, losing sense of herself and the people around her - but the love for her child is ever-present. A raw portrait of what motherhood can unleash, as it was never told before.
Die My Love takes you into the abyss with Grace, forcing you to fall with her and keep looking. Ramsay’s mystifying yet realistic way of capturing this story with Seamus McGarvey’s (Nocturnal Animals, Atonement) saturated cinematography makes you never want to look away. The mystic mostly lies in the setting in which the story takes place - a remote house, somewhere unspecified, hidden between long grass and dark woods. Almost like in a fairytale, yet the story and the way the actors bring it, couldn’t feel more real. Showstealer is Jennifer Lawrence, who unleashes the animal in herself as she plays the lead role of Grace. Her electrifying performance brings Grace close to me, although we couldn’t look less alike. Lawrence does not hold back.
In this film, there is no such thing as subtle acting: We go fully feral mode, no filters. Grace screams, scratches the walls, crawls on the floor, but never loses me in the process. Ramsay's direction is fearless, and Lawrence takes this literally. If she’s not speaking literally, her body is talking. The synthesis of Jennifer Lawrence and Lynne Ramsay creates something astonishingly harrowing and deeply despairing, without ever losing a sense of humour. Robert Pattison stars alongside Lawrence as Jackson, her troubled yet seemingly understanding husband. He appears to be supportive, but his infidelity drives Grace to her limits - if she wasn’t already there.
Die My Love is no self-destructive solo show, although it may seem like that on paper. It is a thoughtful character study, examining motherhood and a complex relationship between two people who love each other that requires patience and understanding, without falling into clichés. It gets under your skin and simultaneously finds a form of humour in pain. Two hours of uncomfort, tied together by a David Bowie needle drop near the end, leaving me terrified but smiling.
Release in Dutch theatres: November 20th
Release in Belgian theatres: November 7th
Hava Masaeva is 23 jaar en komt uit Antwerpen. In juni behaalde ze haar Master in Filmstudies en Visuele Cultuur. Nu woont ze in Amsterdam, waar ze filmprogrammeur is bij Filmhuis Cavia. Momenteel werkt ze achter de schermen bij Film Fest Gent.