This article contains spoilers.
Released Friday, Director Lynne Ramsay’s “Die My Love” aims to be a haunting psychological drama about postpartum depression, but instead devolves into a frenzied fever dream that sensationalizes a very sensitive topic.
Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) are an unmarried couple who move into a dilapidated Montana farmhouse shortly before Grace gives birth to their son. Following the move, Grace falls into an erratic spiral of instability — a chaos the film mirrors through its fragmented, vignette-style editing.
At first, the disjointed montage structure feels purposeful, evoking the disorientation of new motherhood. The lack of transitions and abrupt cuts heighten the feeling of Grace’s mania and confusion. But after nearly two hours of repetitive and jarring sequences, the technique loses its edge.
The film’s attempt to portray the whirlwind of postpartum emotion eventually collapses into incoherence, turning what could have been a touching portrayal into an aesthetic gimmick.
Lawrence delivers an intense and convincing performance as Grace, balancing fragility and fury. Pattinson’s Jackson, though underwritten, effectively captures the helplessness of a partner watching their loved one unravel. But Grace’s character is written less like a struggling new mother and more like a caricature of psychosis — she bashes her head into mirrors, shoots the family dog and has an affair with a mysterious motorcyclist who seems to be haunting her.
These extremes make the film more horrific than intentionally unsettling.
Tension peaks with the movie’s one true jumpscare. Following her wedding, Grace abruptly smashes her head into the camera, which is positioned as the mirror in her bridal suite. The moment is jarring and visceral, the clearest representation of her final psychological break. It is one of the few times where the intensity of the film feels earned rather than excessive.
When Grace enters a mental healthcare facility after a breakdown that nearly endangers her baby, the story shifts to therapy sessions and hallucinations that blur reality and delusion. Eventually, she appears to recover and adapt to being the stereotypical housewife, only for the illusion to shatter in a devastating final act.
Despite its narrative flaws, “Die My Love” offers moments of brilliance in its direction and cinematography. The use of sound and perspective — often framing the world through Grace’s eyes — helps the audience empathize with her unraveling psyche. Recurring motifs, like the ever-present motorcyclist affair partner and Grace’s writing project, tie the story together in a cohesive manner, even when the nonexistent plot falters.
Still, the film’s greatest failure is its portrayal of postpartum depression.
By exaggerating Grace’s symptoms into violent psychosis, “Die My Love” distorts a deeply human and misunderstood experience into spectacle. While the movie captures certain truths — isolation, pressure, body dysmorphia and the disconnect between partners — it ultimately alienates many of the women it seeks to represent. Grace is a hyperbole of mental illness, not an accurate representation of the postpartum mother struggling against a society that fails in compassion. Dramatizing the experience to such extremes, it invalidates the pressure many women undergo.
“Die My Love” is visually striking and emotionally charged, but it mistakes hysteria for honesty. Lawrence and Pattinson brought sincerity and depth to their roles, but even their profound performances can’t redeem a story that undermines mental health with melodrama.
What could have been a powerful depiction of postpartum struggle instead burns out in its own chaos.
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