Lynne Ramsay, the writer-director of Die My Love, has never been a filmmaker to tread softly around contentious material. Just look at her adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin or the visceral character study You Were Never Really Here, starring Joaquin Phoenix.
Hers is cinema as catharsis and her latest film is just that. Joining the ranks of a contemporary vanguard of high drama spearheaded by filmmakers such as Andrea Arnold, Mary Bronstein, Coralie Fargeat and Emerald Fennell, this fraught and sophisticated drama is part emotional rollercoaster, part kitchen sink drama and part a heightened version of a life that audiences can gravitate towards, despite the seemingly impenetrable nature of the trauma. Or maybe because of it.
