Lynne Ramsay last participated in competition in Cannes in 2017 with the phenomenal You Were Never Here. This year, Ramsay returns to the Croisette with Die, My Love, based on the novel of the same name by Ariana Harwicz and adapted by Ramsay with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch. Although the action is transposed from France to rural Montana, Ramsay sticks close to the source, which is an unflinching and unsentimental depiction of motherhood, sexual desire and post-partum psychosis.
Jennnifer Lawrence is Grace, a writer, who lives with Jackson (Robert Pattinson). They decide to move into his dead Uncle Frank’s home – ‘I lost a tooth on this porch’ – just a short distance from where he grew up and where his parents still live. Ramsay dashes through time in the opening couple of scenes: one minute the horny couple are having hot and slightly violent sex, the next Grace is hugely pregnant. The film flits back and forth between past and present: in one scene the baby is six months old and then the film backtracks to Thanksgiving, where Grace heavily pregnant. Jackson’s dad Harry (Nick Nolte) is in the kitchen, alone and confused while the rest of the family gather in the dining room.
