Keswick Film Club - Die My Love

Synopsis

How about Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson? Directed by Lynne Ramsay (who brought us greats like 'Ratcatcher' and 'We Need To Talk About Kevin'), Jennifer Lawrence here gives her best performance as new mother, Grace - "Several recent films have attempted to examine the feral, demented side of new motherhood. But thanks to a fearless, physically committed performance from Lawrence, and to the bold risks embraced by director Lynne Ramsay, 'Die My Love' is, by no small margin, the most successful to date. It might be postpartum psychosis that has Grace in its grip. It might be depression. Or it might be that reality for Grace has become distorted by a haze of hormones and a cracked lens of anxiety. The film stops short of offering a solid diagnosis, instead immersing us in Grace's unnerving fever dream" - Wendy Ide, Observer.

The real difference here is that we see the world as it appears to Grace, NOT as the world sees Grace (reminds me of 'The Father's portrayal of Alzheimer's from within his own mind). Grace and Jackson (Pattinson) start out as a happy couple moving into a house far from everyone (except his mother, played brilliantly by Sissy Spacek) which they love, but which gradually becomes a prison to Grace as her mind loses more and more grasp of reality. The film "captures most meaningfully the feeling of spiralling mental distress as like a dam that’s about to burst with no river to carry its water. What everyone around her interprets as erratic behaviour, for us, already inside her head, looks clearly like increasingly desperate attempts to find an outlet. Where Ramsay leads us isn't hopeful and isn't happy. But it's a fearsome, allconsuming spell of a film, and its effects are unshakeable" - Clarisse Loughrey, Independent. Unmissable too!