November 12, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Lynne Ramsay
Culture Representation: Taking place in Montana, the dramatic film “Die My Love” (based on the novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A homemaker’s struggles with mental illness get worse after she experiences post-partum depression, while the father of her child and his family members feel helpless and unsure of how to cope.
Culture Audience: “Die My Love” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker Lynn Ramsay and intense psychological dramas.
Don’t expect a crime drama when watching “Die My Love.” It’s a patchwork collection of memories and experiences about a troubled woman whose mental illness gets worse during her post-partum depression. Her co-dependent family members don’t know how to cope with it all. The acting is better than the story. Because of the difficult subject matter and because of the way it’s presented as a fever dream, “Die My Love” isn’t a movie for everyone. In fact, many viewers will dislike how “Die My Love” doesn’t have a conclusion that cleanly resolves the many problems of the main character.
Directed by Lynne Ramsay (who co-wrote the “Die My Love” screenplay with Alice Birch), “Die My Love” is based on the Ariana Harwicz’s 2012 “Die, My Love” novel. The movie changes the location of the story from rural France (the location in the book) to rural Montana, in an unnamed city. “Die My Love” had its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Ramsay is known for making movies about people who have mental health issues. It’s not her best movie, but it’s certainly memorable for its disturbing but realistic depiction of how mental illness that isn’t treated consistently can wreck people’s lives.
“Die My Love” begins by showing a montage of an unmarried couple in their 30s who have relocated from New York to rural Montana. Grace (played by Jennifer Lawrence) is an aspiring writer. Jackson (played by Robert Pattinson) talks enthusiastically about playing drums, but he’s not a professional drummer. Instead, the only job that he’s depicted as having is an unnamed blue-collar job where he has to travel away from home and works three days a week.
Grace and Jackson have moved into a shabby house that used to be owned by Jackson’s uncle Frank, who is deceased. When Grace asks Jackson how Frank died, Jackson hesitates and then mumbles that he doesn’t know. Grace later finds out from Jackson’s mother Pam (played by Sissy Spacek) that Frank died by shooting himself. Frank shot himself in a body part that typically isn’t the place where most people commit suicide by gun violence. This information both fascinates and repulses Grace.
The opening montage goes from Grace and Jackson moving into this house, having sex, and Grace being pregnant. Grace gives birth to a baby boy, whose name (Harry) isn’t revealed until later in the movie. Harry is also the name of Jackson’s father (played by Nick Nolte), who had dementia and was alive when Grace was pregnant. Sometime before or after baby Harry was born, elder Harry died. Frank was elder Harry’s brother.
Grace has no siblings. Her parents died in a plane crash when she was a child. And if she has any living family members, they are not seen or mentioned in this story. The only family members that Grace has in this story are baby Henry, Jackson, and the biological relatives of Jackson. Grace not having any adult biological relatives whom she can turn to for emotional support seems to cause her to feel even more isolated and resentful of the fact that the only family members she has are because of Jackson.
“Die My Love” (which has a non-chronological narrative) is a series of scenes that show the unraveling of Grace, especially after she has post-partum depression. She loses interest in writing and neglects basic housekeeping responsibilities. She is an attentive parent to Harry when she’s in the right state of mind, but her mental illness causes her to do very unhealthy things to herself, which hinders her ability to give stable parenting to Harry.
Most of the movie is about Grace’s first year as a mother of baby Harry, but there are also several flashback scenes of that take place before Grace gave birth. Grace has hallucinations and dreams that are filmed in blue-gray lighting. Her hallucinations include having a secret affair with a neighbor named Karl (played by LaKeith Stanfield), who has a real-life non-sexual encounter with her that is very different from her fantasies about him. In real life, Karl is a married father who doesn’t know Grace very well.
Before the birth of baby Harry, the relationship between Grace and Jackson had some communication problems, but the couple showed a lot of loving and playful affection with each other. Their sexual intimacy had a primal, animalistic vibe, such as the way that Grace and Jackson liked to horse around and wrestle each other as foreplay. And for whatever reason, when Grace feels frisky, she has a habit of slowly crawling on all fours and acting like a feline who’s stalking prey. (She does this multiple times in the movie.)
After the birth of baby Harry, Grace’s becomes irritable and hard to please—restless in some moments, lethargic in other moments. Jackson doesn’t know how to deal with Grace’s mood swings and unpredictability. Jackson is portrayed as an unsophisticated guy who has simple needs and isn’t knowledgeable about topics that are too cerebral for him, such as psychology. Jackson loves Grace but he understandably gets frustrated when she verbally lashes out at him and eventually becomes a danger to herself.
For example, Grace accuses Jackson of infidelity when she has no proof. She calls him derogatory names when he doesn’t give her sex when she demands it. And she self-harms in ways that are very disturbing, such as throwing herself out of a glass door at the house. In another incident, Grace bashes her head against a mirror on the night that she had Jackson get married. (Jackson and Grace get married about six months after baby Harry is born.)
Pam offers to help as much as she can, but Pam is deeply in denial about what type of help Grace really needs. Pam thinks that all Grace needs is more rest. “Die My Love” is not an easy film to watch if viewers are expecting a certain predictable story arc. Lawrence and Pattinson give impactful performances that fall short of being extraordinary because of the movie’s repetitive nature. However, “Die My Love” succeeds in its depiction of what it’s like to be trapped in a self-destructive psyche.
MUBI released “Die My Love” in U.S. cinemas on November 7, 2025.
