Madness feels itchy. In Die My Love, we hear it in the constant ho-hum buzz of the flies, their dirty, spindly limbs always threatening to brush against vulnerable skin. We see it in the abandoned house carpeted in dry, brittle leaves and the clashing patterns of chintzy floral wallpaper. We sense it in the breast milk dripped carelessly from a nipple into a puddle of ink, looked down upon by a creator on two fronts, mother and writer – but signifying nothing but the universe sapped of its significance.
When the woman consumed by madness in Lynne Ramsay’s abrasively beautiful Die My Love is played by Jennifer Lawrence, words become unnecessary. Her character, Grace, has recently relocated from New York to live in a house once occupied by the dead uncle of her husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson), in order to raise their newborn son. The uncle shot himself there. You can sense his ghost pounding on the walls.
