JLaw and RPattz melt down

Lynne Ramsay hasn’t made a feature film since 2017’s You Were Never Really Here, but she is back this fall with Die My Love, a new emotional horror show starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson. The trailer dropped yesterday, and it looks like a merry meltdown of a time.

Die My Love is based on Ariana Harwicz’s Spanish-language novel Matate amor (translated into English by Sarah Moses and Carolina Orloff), about a mother whose emotional and mental states are strained by domestic life in rural France. The English translation of the novel was sent by Martin Scorsese to Jennifer Lawrence, who in turn sent it to Lynne Ramsay. This is the kind of cinephile daisy chain that doubles as a trivia night clue. Ramsay adapted the novel along with playwright Enda Walsh and playwright/screenwriter Alice Birch, and she eventually agreed to direct, after JLaw insisted upon it.

But with Ramsay’s directorship came a thematic change—Harwicz’s tale of post-partum depression and maternal anxiety is instead focused on the love story between new parents Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Pattinson). The shape of the novel is still there, though, as Grace and Jackson relocate to a rural community (now set in Montana) and they have a baby together. Domesticity is clearly weighing on Grace, and Jackson is suspiciously absent. It looks like everything really goes to sh-t, which is par for the course for a Lynne Ramsay film. She doesn’t do comfort and catharsis.

Die My Love premiered at Cannes, where Pattinson and especially Lawrence got rave reviews for their performances. The film is produced by Scorsese and is being distributed by Mubi, who took The Substance from Cannes to Oscar last year. Can they do the same for Die My Love? They’re obviously trying, giving the film a plum early November release date and centering the trailer on the dynamic of JLaw and RPattz and all the raves for their performances. 

But there is a hurdle, and that is Lynne Ramsay herself. Don’t get me wrong—she’s a spectacular filmmaker and the Oscars look f-cking stupid for not having recognized that yet. But that is the hurdle, she isn’t very Oscar friendly. This is where I remind everyone that conversations about the Oscar race are not the same as conservations about a film itself. I am very much looking forward to Lynne Ramsay’s return to feature filmmaking. She never does what you expect, her films always lead somewhere interesting, challenging, and memorable. She does not work at a fast pace, and her films are ALWAYS worth the wait. 

But there is a clear Oscar strategy here, and in terms of THAT, Mubi et al have an uphill battle because the Academy has not yet responded to Ramsay’s work. I’ve never gotten the impression Lynne Ramsay cares about that, but again, Mubi is obviously running their playbook, which worked with The Substance, and I am curious to see if it works for Lynne Ramsay. The Substance is not what we think of as a typical “Oscar movie”, yet it garnered five nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. 

Can the Mubi playbook work for Lynne Ramsay? Again, I’m not convinced she cares about Oscars, but I would like to see her get more mainstream recognition as one of the best filmmakers working today. Maybe letting JLaw and RPattz burn it all down in a fiery twisted love story will be the trick to getting that kind of recognition.