In perhaps the year’s best onscreen performance, Jennifer Lawrence delivers an astonishing portrait of a young woman’s mental breakdown in Die My Love. Lawrence plays Grace, a writer who marries Jackson (Robert Pattison), whose job requires him to be on the road for days at a time. They move into Jackson’s inheritance, a ramshackle house in Montana outside the town Jackson’s mom Pam (Sissy Spacek) lives in. And they have a baby.
Grace is playful and imaginative, and she adores her baby. But she’s isolated at home with no relief from the grind of the baby care. She has lost her interest in writing. She becomes tired, irritable and down in the dumps. Jackson is selfish, clueless about Grace’s changing needs, and has a knack for doing exactly the wrong thing, like bringing home the most annoying pet dog on the planet.
Grace’s mother-in-law Pam, who likes Grace, sees that she is struggling and tries to help. But Grace slides into depression with ever more alarming symptoms and decompensates. Finally, Grace’s behavior shocks Jackson, who starts doing everything he can think of to help, but he is ill-equipped, and it’s too little, too late.
Many actors would love to portray an explosive meltdown, and Lawrence makes you lean back in your theater seats when Grace goes off. But Jennifer Lawrence’s genius is most apparent in the moments that she is just BEING in her condition and in the moments that she is trying to hold it together for others. As Grace’s psyche evolves, this is a performance of astonishing texture and nuance.
Pattinson is excellent as Jackson, who the audience initially sees as a shit, but who becomes very sympathetic as he struggles to help Grace get right, before her illness destroys him, too. Sissy Spacek, is perfectly cast as Pam, who has her own struggles with grief and aging, but brings her good heart, intuition and common sense to become the audience’s surrogate.
What’s going on with Grace? I think The Wife was correct is suggesting that Grace came with an underlying bi-polar disorder which was exacerbated by the postpartum depression. Early in the movie, we see Grace as playful, but maybe that playfulness is a bit frenzied. Of course, it’s fun for Jackson then, but she’s destined to become way more than he can handle. Late in the movie, we see flashbacks from their wedding, and the signs are there.
Die My Love was directed and co-written by Lynne Ramsey, who seems to specialize in madness (We Need to Talk About Kevin, You Were Never Here). Ramsey keeps us off-balance by keeping us unsure about whether what is onscreen is Grace’s real experience or a dream, delusion, or hallucination. Both a black horse and the LaKeith Stanfield character appear to Grace multiple times, but perhaps only once each in reality. It’s just not always clear. After the movie, The Wife and I actually had different views about which of the ending scenes really happened or were imagined. This is smart, artsy filmmaking, which works to keep us guessing.
So, should you see Die My Love? It’s an epic acting performance in a well-made Feel Bad movie, so there you are. Die My Love is now in theaters.