Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love is not a film designed for comfort. It arrives with the intensity of a fever dream and the jagged edges of a raw nerve, refusing to offer easy answers or tidy resolutions to the existential nightmare unfolding on screen.
This is film as immersion therapy, plunging viewers headfirst into the psychological disintegration of Grace, a young mother trapped in rural Montana whose grip on reality splinters with each passing day. At countless points through this film, I found myself questioning my own sanity and wondering what was actually happening. Was it real? Was it a metaphor? Or was it a dream or a hallucination? Honestly, by the end, I was asking those same questions about the film as a whole.
What’s Die My Love About?
Based on Ariana Harwicz’s 2012 novel, “Die My Love follows Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson), a couple who relocate from New York City to Jackson’s inherited family home in the Montana wilderness. What begins as an idyllic escape quickly transforms into something far more sinister. After the birth of their child, Grace descends into severe postpartum depression that morphs into full psychosis, her sense of self eroding as the walls close in around her.
The movie takes us through Grace’s increasingly disturbing behavior: crawling through tall grass with a butcher knife, throwing herself through glass doors, tearing sinks from bathroom walls, and engaging in primal acts of desperation that blur the line between sexuality and violence.
The film’s structure deliberately disorients. Time becomes elastic and ambiguous, with scenes unfolding in a non-linear fashion that mirrors Grace’s fractured mental state. We see glimpses of Grace and Jackson’s passionate early days in their relationship juxtaposed against the numbing monotony of new parenthood.
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Jackson’s mother, Pam (Sissy Spacek), lives nearby and struggles with her own tenuous grip on reality following the recent death of her husband, Harry (Nick Nolte). There’s also Karl (LaKeith Stanfield), another new parent who may or may not be real, existing somewhere in the liminal space between Grace’s imagination and actual encounters.
Die My Love Movie Trailer
Die My Love Movie Review: What I Did and Didn’t Like
Shot on 35mm film in a claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio, the film traps audiences in Grace’s perspective. Even when she roams through vast Montana landscapes, there’s no escape. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey utilized Kodak Ektachrome reversal stock to create a skewed, almost dreamlike visual signature that enhances the film’s disorienting quality. The result is a viewing experience that feels suffocating and overwhelming, mirroring the protagonist’s psychological imprisonment.
But what really made Die My Love so compelling, and simultaneously so maddening (for me), is its refusal to conform to traditional narrative structures. Ramsay has created a mood piece that prioritizes emotional truth over plot mechanics, and the results are both mesmerizing and exasperating. The film succeeds brilliantly in making you feel Grace’s isolation and desperation. The use of that boxy 4:3 frame constantly reminds us that Grace is trapped, no matter how much open space surrounds her.
The dark humor threaded throughout is unexpected and effective. Grace’s interactions with the people in her life carry an absurdist quality that prevents the film from becoming oppressively bleak. When Jackson brings home an incessantly barking dog expecting Grace to care for it while he travels for work, the scene plays as both tragedy and dark comedy. Lawrence’s commitment to these moments of black humor gives them an uncomfortable authenticity.
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The Script
Working from a screenplay she co-wrote with playwrights Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, Ramsay transforms Harwicz’s internal monologue into a predominantly visual experience. The novel is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, filled with poisonous thoughts and maternal ambivalence, but Ramsay wisely avoids leaning too heavily on voiceover or dialogue-heavy exposition. Instead, the script relies on physicality and behavior to convey Grace’s psychological state.
The screenplay’s greatest strength lies in its resistance to easy categorization or diagnosis. Grace is never explicitly diagnosed with postpartum depression or psychosis. There are no scenes with doctors prescribing medication or family interventions with clear treatment plans. This omission is deliberate. Director Lynne Ramsay pushed back against critics who labeled the film simply as a postpartum depression story, stating at Cannes: “This whole postpartum thing is just bullshit. It’s not about that. It’s about a relationship breaking down, it’s about love breaking down, and sex breaking down after having a baby. And it’s also about a creative block.”
The script explores how Grace’s identity as a writer has been subsumed by motherhood, how sexual intimacy transforms (or disappears) after childbirth, and how isolation can accelerate mental decline. Grace’s struggles become universal even as they manifest in extreme, specific ways.
A Complicated Service to Maternal Mental Health?
Yet this ambiguity raises questions about the film’s service to those dealing with postpartum depression. Does Die My Love do justice to this experience?
The answer is complicated. On one hand, the film’s unflinching portrayal of maternal ambivalence and psychological suffering gives voice to feelings many new mothers experience but fear acknowledging. The shame, the isolation, the sense of losing yourself while everyone expects you to be grateful and fulfilled… these emotional truths resonate powerfully.
Lawrence herself, who experienced postpartum depression after filming, noted in interviews that watching the film helped her understand Grace’s mindset: “I hadn’t experienced postpartum while filming, but I knew that suicide is a leading cause of death among new moms. I couldn’t understand how she could do that because I loved my baby so much. But once I experienced postpartum, I realized it has nothing to do with love; it’s about feeling imperfect next to something so perfect.”
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On the other hand, by refusing to name Grace’s condition or explicitly show her receiving help, the film risks leaving viewers without resources or hope. And, while artistically bold, the ending (don’t worry, no spoilers here), may not offer much solace to those seeking affirmation that recovery is possible.
Ramsay’s comments about the film’s metaphorical nature suggest she views Grace’s self-destruction as a kind of liberation. Speaking about the ending (again, trust me, no spoilers), she explained: “I was trying my hardest. It’s not in the book. I just felt like she wants to burn the world down. It’s a metaphorical liberation.”
This framing positions the film more as a Gothic tale about a woman who refuses to be domesticated. Whether this artistic choice serves or undermines the understanding of postpartum mental health issues remains an open question….
The Performances
Jennifer Lawrence in ‘Die My Love’
Jennifer Lawrence as Grace
The performances in Die My Love are without question the film’s strongest element. Jennifer Lawrence delivers what is arguably the most challenging and uncompromising work of her career. This is not the charismatic, accessible Lawrence of The Hunger Games or Silver Linings Playbook. This is something feral, raw, and completely untethered. She filmed many of these scenes while four-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child, adding an extraordinary physical and emotional layer to an already demanding role.
Lawrence’s Grace is simultaneously seductive and repellent, maternal and destructive, vulnerable and terrifying. She shifts from catatonic emptiness to explosive rage within single takes, her body language morphing from predatory crawling to collapsed exhaustion.
The physicality of the performance is stunning. Whether she’s scratching bathroom walls until her nails bleed, climbing inside a refrigerator, or prowling on all fours through grass like an animal stalking prey, Lawrence commits completely. There’s no vanity here, no concern for likability or traditional markers of movie-star glamour. She embodies Grace’s dissolution with a freedom that feels almost dangerous to watch.
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Critics have already begun discussing Oscar potential for Lawrence’s performance, which would be her fifth nomination. The comparison to her work in 2017’s Mother! is inevitable, but this feels even more visceral and unprotected.
Robert Pattinson in ‘Die My Love’
Robert Pattinson as Jackson
Robert Pattinson wisely portrays Jackson in a deliberately understated manner, creating a stark contrast to Lawrence’s volcanic performance. His Jackson is not a villain, but rather a well-meaning man completely out of his depth. Pattinson channels an everyman quality, portraying a thirty-something man-child who brings home a dog, expecting his struggling wife to care for it, and suggests his wife “talk” about her feelings, while fundamentally not understanding the severity of her crisis.
The performance is effective precisely because Jackson’s ordinariness makes Grace’s extraordinary suffering more isolating. Pattinson and Lawrence share genuine chemistry, particularly in the film’s opening sequences, where they communicate through physicality rather than words, nuzzling, biting, wrestling in primal displays of desire.
The Supporting Cast
Sissy Spacek delivers a quietly powerful performance as Pam, Jackson’s widowed mother, who recognizes something of her own struggles in Grace’s unraveling. Spacek brings maternal warmth tinged with her own grief and instability, sleepwalking with a gun in scenes that blur the line between dark comedy and genuine menace. Her scenes with Lawrence crackle with understanding, two women adrift in their own ways, connected by shared loss and dislocation.
LaKeith Stanfield’s Karl exists in an ethereal space that keeps audiences guessing whether he’s real or a figment of Grace’s imagination. His understated performance adds to this ambiguity, making his interactions with Grace feel simultaneously grounded and dreamlike. The film never definitively confirms Karl’s reality, leaving viewers to question how many of his scenes actually happened versus whether they exist purely in Grace’s fractured psyche (one of my many ‘what the heck is going on’ moments…).
Overall Thoughts
Die My Love is not for everyone, and it doesn’t pretend to be. Ramsay has crafted a film that exists in the space between arthouse provocation and genuine psychological horror, borrowing techniques from Antonin Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty to break down the barriers that keep audiences feeling safe.
The film works best when understood not as a straightforward narrative but as a sensory experience designed to replicate Grace’s mental state. The aggressive sound design, with blaring rock music and deafening slams that assault the ears… the claustrophobic framing that traps characters in doorways and corners… the time distortions that make it impossible to track how much time has passed… all of these choices serve to destabilize viewers in ways that mirror the protagonist’s experience. When you emerge from Die My Love, you should feel like you’ve been through something, like you’ve barely survived tumultuous rapids. That’s the point.
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But does that make a good film? The question of whether this movie serves those experiencing postpartum depression remains complex. It offers validation for dark feelings rarely depicted on screen, but it also provides no roadmap for recovery or healing. Grace’s story ends in metaphorical immolation, and while Ramsay intends this as liberation rather than tragedy, the distinction may be lost on viewers seeking hope.
Perhaps the film’s greatest service is simply its willingness to depict maternal struggle without sentimentality or easy resolution, to show that sometimes love isn’t enough to fix what’s broken, and that the societal pressure to perform gratitude for motherhood can itself become suffocating.
However, this one just didn’t work for me – despite the beautiful cinematography and incredible performances.
Pankaj Kapur in ‘Jab Khuli Kitaab’
| Photo Credit: ZEE5
Cracks in conjugality constitute a common conflict device in Hindi cinema. Usually, the male commits the bhool and expects forgiveness. Most fissures appear early, but what if a grandmother reveals a long-buried truth? Can the man accept it as easily as he expects forgiveness? Seasoned actor and theatre practitioner Saurabh Shukla gives new meaning to a prescribed book, making us both chuckle and reflect.
Being a cinematic adaptation of his play, the constraints of the medium are not completely erased, but it shines as a heartfelt exploration of love’s endurance.
The film’s core premise revolves around a decades-old secret — Anusuya’s (Dimple Kapadia) confession of an indiscretion early in their marriage — that surfaces after she awakens from a coma. This revelation forces Gopal (Pankaj Kapur) to re-examine 50 years of trust through the lens of this buried truth as a forgotten ad hoc presence in his life threatens to become a permanent peeve. Enter Negi (Aparshakti Khurana), a young client-chasing lawyer who becomes an unlikely facilitator of tough conversations, legal proceedings, and emotional confrontations.
Synopsis: Gopal and Anusuya’s decades-long marriage is shaken by a revelation.
Though the transgression is a distant memory, its emergence shatters Gopal’s sense of shared space with Anusuya. He questions whether the life he built was an illusion. The woman he cared for seems suddenly unfamiliar. The film asks questions that may seem flimsy but persist in memory. For instance, Anusuya’s love for poetry that Gopal never really discovers, or the concept of marzi (inclination) in relationships.
Meanwhile, the revelation shakes the family unit. The parents initially try to shield the children from the truth, but the tension inevitably seeps in. Initially, it seems the son and son-in-law are bitten by the Baghban bug, but as the film progresses, the writing provides space for a dialogue on how companionship extends beyond the couple.
The film quietly reflects on the role of memory in a marriage, treating it as a central force that both sustains and disrupts long-term bonds. Gopal’s growing dementia suddenly seems like a cure for his marital problem. Without underlining, Shukla also explores the impact of the revelation on Gopal’s social psyche. Suddenly, a seemingly progressive man starts behaving like a parochial uncle, as we find dozens of them around us these days. Is it always the personal that shapes the political socialisation? Another uncle reminds us that laughing too much leads to days of sorrow, as if the Almighty has assigned us a quota of happiness.
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A still from the film
| Photo Credit:
ZEE5
Kapur’s masterful control shines through in Gopal’s progression from bewilderment and stubborn pride to vulnerability and, eventually, the rediscovery of love. Over the years, Kapur has shone in the estuary of comedy that holds a tragedy in its fold. He lives the script’s shifting tones. From the tender caregiving scenes in the beginning to the profound internal shift in demeanour and body language toward the film’s resolution— the transformation feels earned and believable.
It is hard to believe Dimple as a wilting wife, but soon we realise it’s the gravitas in her voice and personality that makes Anusuya a believable picture of regret and resilience.
We know the coma is more like a metaphor, but the medical aspect is treated with a heavy hand. The plot unfolds in a somewhat linear and foreseeable way, with the revelation and its consequences following expected beats. The contrivances, the dot-to-dot mechanics of storytelling, surface in the second half as if the director is keen on arriving at the crux without peeling the layers properly. But it is the chemistry between Shukla and Kapur that prevents this bittersweet dramedy from becoming schmaltzy.
In cinema logic, sharks, especially great whites, make excellent characters in animation. From Bruce in Finding Nemo to Mr Shark, the master of disguise in The Bad Guys, these apex predators turn their great gummy mouths with many pointy teeth into jolly good fellows.
In Hoppers, the 30th animation film from Pixar, there is a great white called Diane (Vanessa Bayer), who, despite being a scary assassin, has such sweet, shining eyes and a warm smile that one cannot help but grinning back.
Hoppers (English)
Director: Daniel Chong
Voice cast: Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, Dave Franco
Storyline: A fierce animal lover uses a new technology to converse with animals and save their habitat from greedy, self-serving humans
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Runtime: 104 minutes
We first meet Mabel (Piper Curda) as a little girl trying to set all the animals in school free and being sent home for her pains (and also because she bites one of the teachers trying to stop her). Her busy mother drops Mabel with her grandmother (Karen Huie) who shows her the peace and quiet that can be hers if she only stops to listen.
The glade where grandmother Tanaka teaches her this valuable life lesson becomes a special place for Mabel. Years later, after her grandmother has passed, 19-year-old Mabel is a college student and still fighting for animal rights.
Matters come to a head when the mayor of Beaverton, Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm) plans to blow up the glade to build a freeway. Mabel tries to get signatures from the citizenry to stop the freeway plans, but that comes to naught as people quickly turn away from the zealous Mabel.
Frustrated, with no recourse in sight, Mabel chances upon a beaver making its way to her university’s biology lab. First worried that her biology professor Sam (Kathy Najimy) is doing some unspeakable animal experiments, Mabel is nonplussed to find that Sam, with her colleague Nisha (Aparna Nancherla) and graduate student Conner (Sam Richardson), have developed a revolutionary technology to transfer human consciousness to robot animal.
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Mabel uploads her consciousness into a robot beaver and sets off to thwart the mayor. Seeing the world from the animals’ perspective gives Mabel a unique point of view. Hoppers has jokes, chases, largeness of heart and solid science — not consciousness-switching with robot animals or flying shark assassins but the fact that beavers are the environmental engineers of the natural world.
The voice cast is wonderful, from Bobby Moynihan as the beaver king, George to Dave Franco as Titus, the prickly butterfly who becomes the insect king after Mabel accidentally kills his mum — the Insect Queen, played with terrifying grandeur by Meryl Streep.
The animals are delightfully delineated, from the spaced-out beaver, Loaf (Eduardo Franco) to Ellen (Melissa Villaseñor) the grumpy bear. The animation is lovely, with each of the animal and human characteristics clearly outlined. From the mayor’s grasping to Sam’s brilliance, Mabel’s fervour to Loaf’s stillness, and the different animal monarchs’ regality, it is all given marvellous life.
ALSO READ: ‘The Bride!’ movie review: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s glam-goth Frankenstein can’t hold its stitches
The “pond rules” ensure that the animals are not completely anthropomorphised — a sticky point in animation films where carnivores and herbivores hang together without even a sneaky licking of lips!
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Smart, funny, exciting, honest, and touching, Hoppers is the kind of film you can watch with the bachcha party and elders alike, with a happy grin. And then there is Diane of the red, red lips and sparkly white rotating teeth — yes, Hoppers boasts that level of detailing.
The satirical romp Josie and the Pussycats (2001) is a fun movie. But is it a great rock ‘n’ roll movie? Eh, not so fast on that second one. Welcome back to Glide’s quest for what makes a good rock ‘n’ roll movie. Last month, we looked at Almost Famous, a great launching pad because it gets so much right. And every first Friday, we’ll take another look at a rock ‘n’ movie and ask what it means in the larger pantheon. This month, the Glide’s screening room brings you Josie and the Pussycahttps://glidemagazine.com/322100/almost-perfect-why-almost-famous-sets-the-gold-standard-for-rock-movies/ts. The film is a live-action take on the classic comic-and-cartoon property of a sugary, all-girl rock trio that exists in the world of Riverdale, a.k.a. fictional home of the iconic Archie Andrews.
But this Josie has next to nothing to do with Riverdale and is instead a satire of consumerism and ’00s boy bands. A worthy target, and a topic that has stayed worthy in the quarter-century since Josie dropped. The film was not a hit, but it has become something of a cult classic (like many movies featured in this series).
The plot is fairly simple. Wyatt Frame, an evil corporate type, is making piles of money off boy band Du Jour. They start to wise up to his evil scheme and have to be… taken care of. Frame needs a new group to front his plot, which revolves around mind control to push consumer culture. Enter Josie and the Pussycats, who are about to have a whirlwind ride to the top. And along the way, foil a plot with tentacles so far-reaching they have ensnared… Carson Daly?
Josie is a fun, clever movie, but it doesn’t have a whole lot to say about real rock ‘n’ roll, unless you want to simply accept a perspective that it’s just another cynical consumer-driven product. Even that is an argument that can be made, as long as you’re willing to ignore underground and indie scenes and passionate artists making amazing music.
And it is true that this is a theme of Josie. The band triumphs at the end via their authentic music. But it somehow doesn’t feel authentic, which makes it something of a hollow victory. Let’s consider the criteria already established for a good rock ‘n’ roll movie, and how Josie delivers on that front. The first is in the characters department. The film dodges the previously established Buckethead Paradox, which states that “The real-life rock stars are so much larger than life that you can’t make up credible fictional versions. There is no way someone like Buckethead would come out of a writer’s room and make it to a screen.”
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For better or worse, Josie dodges the Paradox by essentially embracing it. The characters themselves are cartoons, and there’s no effort at realism. Given that intent is a huge part of art, it seems unfair to call these characters “cartoons” as a criticism, and it should probably be a compliment. At the same time, they aren’t particularly memorable, which is not a great quality.
And—as a bonus—Tara Reid is perfectly cast as drummer Melody Valentine. Josie was a few years after her turn in Around the Fire (1998), an unintentionally hilarious classic that plays like a jam band afterschool special from the producers of Reefer Madness (look for this amazing film in an upcoming piece). The acting in general is good, with Rachel Leigh Cook as Josie McCoy and Rosario Dawson as bassist Valerie Brown rounding out the band. And Alan Cumming almost steals the show as sleazy corporate weasel Wyatt Frame.
The character of Wyatt is the film’s funniest riff on a rock ‘n’ roll archetype: the sleazy, corporate manager accompanied by assorted crooked accountants. From Colonel Tom Parker to Albert Grossman to The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. It’s all about the benjamins. Which is where the music comes in. If the music is good, that’s what makes it worth it. And Josie’s music has aged particularly well. It’s well-recorded, produced and executed. The songs are particularly catchy. The vocals are by Kay Hanley of Letters to Cleo. Much of the soundtrack sounds like a lost album from The Muffs, and one wonders why Kim Shattuck wasn’t involved.
There’s an argument that power pop was never supposed to be dangerous, and that the Muffs aren’t dangerous either. Fair on the surface, but they played real punk clubs and came from a real scene. There’s not even a hint of that in Josie. So an argument that they play pop punk (which they kinda do) is really lacking the punk part. And it was produced by Babyface, of all people. While that doesn’t seem like it should lead to great rock ‘n’ roll, sometimes preconceptions are wrong.
That said, this is a very commercial product and sound—as catchy as it is—so maybe it’s not a misconception. Maybe the right question to ask is whether it’s all too perfect? And that’s what gives this ostensibly rock ‘n’ film a smoothed-down edge? After all, the basic ingredients are there. But part of what makes good rock good is that it feels actually dangerous. Maybe there are some actual subversive messages, or a genuine counterculture scene. And Josie simply isn’t that film. The soundtrack is fondly remembered enough that Hanley appeared live and performed the songs at a screening in 2017. That appearance also included the film’s stars Cook, Dawson and Reid.
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It’s worth noting that while Cook and company obviously lip sync to the songs in the film, their performances are credible. They went through instrument boot camp, so they pull off the parts.
In the end, the film is primarily a satire of consumer culture. And even more strangely, is loaded with actual product placement. Clearly, the joke was intended to “hit harder” with real products, but having Target in the film constantly makes it feel like more of what it is parodying than a parody. Where’s the joke if the viewer actually pushes to shop at Target while watching the film? And if the filmmakers actually took money (which they almost certainly did)?
And perhaps that is the lesson for this month: a great rock ‘n’ roll movie needs to have something to say about the larger meaning or culture of the music. And while Josie may have a lot to say about culture in general, and it may say it in a fun and likeable way, it’s just not very rock ‘n’ roll. There’s no grit. Now, does it have some things to say about being in a band? Yes, though they are arguably true of most collaborations.
If someone in a hundred years wanted to understand early 21st century rock, Josie and the Pussycats is a bad choice. It doesn’t show the sweat of a performance or the smell of beer. But it’s a great choice for anyone looking for a light-hearted, fun watch with a great soundtrack. We could all use some sugar in our lives these days. Join us again next month, when we’ll look at one of the inspirations for Josie, A Hard Day’s Night, the legendary first film from The Beatles
