DIE MY LOVE REVIEW – A Woman Unraveled

Though I’d received an email months back asking if I was interested in the new film Die My Love starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, I must’ve missed the director’s name. When it came to light, I reached out for a screener immediately, despite a strong recommendation from my friend Jon against the film. He said, and I quote, “Die My Love is now my second favorite movie. However, that’s because every other movie in existence is tied for first place.”

Lynne Ramsay has been a name amongst auteurs of film for the past twenty-five years. Her mastery of Mise-en-scène actually opened a film appreciation course I took a few years back, so I made sure to note her name as a director to watch. Ironically, there’s a scene towards the middle of the film wherein Jennifer Lawrence’s character, Grace, vents her frustrations by destroying an upstairs bathroom, starting by clawing at the wallpaper. I immediately thought of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” as if Lynne Ramsay had made this film as a summary of my entire English degree path writ large.

To be fair, Die My Love is not for everyone. Neither is We Need to Talk About Kevin or You Were Never Really Here, or probably Ratcatcher (I haven’t seen that one). Ramsay can be seen as a provocateur, though what sets her apart from her contemporaries is her skill as a director. She doesn’t unsettle through shock or superficiality. Her work is carefully composed, every aspect of every frame telling the viewer only the story she chooses, curating your experience and your reactions. Maybe she meant to push Jon away just as she pulled me closer.

To discuss Die My Love, we must first discuss You Were Never Really Here; a lean, mean film about a veteran who performs dirty deeds in the name of justice, walking a tightwire between self-preservation and suicidal abandon. Joaquin Phoenix is phenomenal in the lead role, but it’s all the ingredients of the film, from the page to the edits, that make You Were Never Really Here impact its viewers with such visceral force. Joaquin’s Joe sees the world often as it is, but just as usual, in a singular vision warped by his own mind. This unreliable narration, coupled with shifting timelines, creates a bewildering experience for the viewer, often left to wonder by film’s end if we’ve arrived at the beginning at last, or rather some unforeseen conclusion.

Die My Love treads a similar road. The film suggests an equal number of questions and answers, but they don’t necessarily correlate. Many of your questions will go unanswered while you’re given answers to timeless queries you’d never levied. The “adventures” of Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Pattinson) bounce through time, memory, perception, and fantasy, leaving you simultaneously ignorant and overstimulated. You know too much, but you have no idea what the fuck is going on.

Grace and Jackson move from New York City, where they were a writer and musician, respectively, to his late uncle’s home in Montana. Culture shock and a newborn take their toll on Grace, who unravels throughout the course of the film, searching for relevancy through sex, self-harm, combatancy, and casual destruction. To his credit, Jackson notices something is wrong, even begs for a discourse, but largely he is ineffectual. Pattinson spends much of the film staring through Lawrence, a hangdog expression on his face, pulling a swig from a beer or deliberately closing his eyes against the futility of a lifeguard’s efforts towards a drowned corpse. 

Ramsay’s mission is to tell the tale of a woman unraveling, which puts Lawrence squarely at the center, spinning wildly and flinging supporting characters to the fringes of an already sparse film. (If you can tell me what’s going on with Lakeith Stanfield’s biker neighbor character, then you’re better at film analysis than I am.) Well-meaning friends and family summarily dismiss Grace’s admitted untethering from her identity as a mother and author. “Everybody gets a little loopy in the first year.” “Writers’ block; you’ll break through.” We, the viewers, who recognized the flames from the opening frames, know she won’t.

Google categorizes the film as a “Thriller/Comedy,” but I would posit that it is neither. Die My Love is occasionally funny, despite itself — the kind of laugh that escapes you before you can catch it, leaving you with vague thoughts of self-contempt. It is an experiment in misdirection. It is nothing that it says it is: It is not a thriller, not a comedy, Grace doesn’t really seem to want Jackson to die, Lawrence and Pattinson have completely shed their Hunger Games and Twilight roots, and despite teven thoughhe fact that Lawrence spends most of the film disrobing and begging for sex, the film is definitely unsexy. 

If this all sounds esoteric, rambling, and unfocused, I assure you that’s by design to match the film. I discussed the film with a friend, explaining that due to Grace’s unspooling hold on reality, we’re often lost as to how to feel about what we’re seeing. She frequently fantasizes about being more assertive than she is, which is its own feat, as her agency is likely her strongest feature. She may be at the center of her own tornado, but it’s a tornado, nonetheless.

Die My Love joins an ever-expanding list of cinema as an unrelenting immersive experience. It is often unnerving, unpleasant, and unsettling, but executed with such care and technical precision that one can’t help but appreciate, if not enjoy, the effort. Jennifer Lawrence and Lynne Ramsay are to be commended for their dedication to a film that many will see only as a long-form essay on ennui.

Overall Rating: 7/10

I have to blame myself that this film isn’t scored higher, as it’s a technical and performative achievement no less grand than You Were Never Really Here, perhaps even more. I think it’s largely due to conditioning: we watch Joe disintegrate without a gnawing sense to save him but we can’t do the same for Grace. Though it would be unfair to say that Jennifer Lawrence doesn’t disappear into the role of Grace, we still equate some offscreen version of the character with America’s Sweetheart, punishing our souls as we realize we can’t save her from going feral. The truth of the matter is that Grace may have always been feral; we’re never given enough information to think she’s ever been a character more imbued with, well, grace. We make that assumption on our own, based on Jennifer Lawrence’s face, so we find the act of watching her unravel unforgivable. 

Die My Love premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and was released to limited theaters in the United States on November 7th, 2025. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Sissy Spacek, and Nick Nolte. The film is rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, language, and some violent content.

Have you seen Die My Love? What did you think of it? Have you seen Lynne Ramsay’s other difficult meditations on depression, violence, post-partum, and all the other ugly Lego pieces that make us brittle humans? Let us know in the comments below, and check back with Nerd Initiative for all your pop culture news.