Revue “ Die, My Love ”: Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence are exceptional in the haunting domestic horror
There is no one who can launch a spell like Lynne Ramsay. Whether in a portrait of a mother in shock from the fact that her son committed a violent act or a study of the most only mercenary in the world who is caught in a conspiracy, it is less “what” in history than the way she says. His latest, the confined “Die, My Love” with Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence as a loving couple whose world begins to trigger quickly, is not different. A film that again falls under the banner of “domestic horror” as “we need to speak of Kevin,” die, my love “is to see the way a small crack in the psyche can scratch outside until everything that breaks. Although it is not always as measured as its work passed and often a little rough on the edges on the technical level, the moments when Ramsay removes all the noise to immerse us in the most disturbing experiential elements makes it a welcome return for the filmmaker.
By relying at the Cannes Film Festival, one of the biggest questions was whether the director, who made an incredible start to the festival in 1999 with “Ratcatcher”, would return with this new work. In no case the most prolific of filmmakers, Ramsay’s inclusion immediately made “Die, My Love” one of the most anticipated films of the festival. Although this level of expectation and the high bar that she has established for herself can work against “dying, my love” often rather imperfect, there is still so much to appreciate in the rich details of the distant world that she explores. Even if it can start more and more to feel a little dispersed when approaching a trembling final, the trip to get there offers a lot of Ramsay to its best.
On Saturday in the main competition of the festival, he first presented to us the couple of Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Pattinson) while they are starting to move into their new house. Although this may resemble the configuration of a more conventional horror film, the way Ramsay turns this opening keeps us at an intriguing distance with a wide plan where we see the battered house which will become the main location of the film. We then launched headlong into a series of scenes between the couple where they almost start to tackle in a shared sexual reverie. It is an intoxicating introduction which immediately convinces us of the deep passion of the couple, which makes the rest of the film much more scary as the two move more and more.
More specifically, the couple with a baby upset their life and leaves very different daily experiences each. Where Jackson disappears to work frequently, Grace is completely left at home where she begins to grow “bored of the universe”, as she bitterly says at some point. Although she was once a writer, all her hours of watch are now consumed to take care of their child almost entirely alone. When Jackson then brings back a dog at home without asking, all calm that she could have hoped that in her house evaporates in an instant. As we feel via devouring sound design, Grace is never able to have a moment of peace. It is the version of Ramsay of the recent “Nightbitch”, with Lawrence walking on all fours and barking like a dog, but instead of sanding on the most rough edges of maternity as this film did, it refines them so that everything is entitled to the bone.
Pattinson and Lawrence are exceptional in their roles – the latter becomes a kind of protagonist while the other is a pseudo -antagonist. We can see anger, fear and isolation in each of their movements, with the post behind their eyes proving to be the most frightening part of the whole affair. It is as if we see the ghosts of who each of them lets themselves be left behind the bodies which only go through the movements, living a life which can be the thing that destroys them. This is mainly falling on grace while isolation, buzzing flies, and the general sense that it wastes begins to consume it from the inside.
There are great moments of shocking violence where it comes to the head, including a scene where Lawrence launches through a glass door. There is a quirky humor that Ramsay, working from a script that she co-written with Enda Walsh, is held in and out of the film. Many interactions that Grace has with the people she meets on a daily basis, while being linked to rage, are also dark. It is not at the expense of her character or the suffering she feels. Instead, it is the dark absurdity of the awake existential nightmare which has come to define all aspects of his life. During a large part of the start of the film, all of this is captured with a fairly safe and confident hand.
Unfortunately, things are starting to crash in a way that the film does not have a master’s degree while we enter the intermediate section. A grace bond only feels half cooked, which could be summed up with the fact that it may not be entirely real in the way we imagine, and ultimately waste the presence of the still magnetic lakeith Stanfield. There are also distracting technical fulfillments in this section, including an awkward use of cinematography from day to night. But these are small missteps for what remains an intriguing work.
While we see grace becoming more distant from life, you find yourself in the fate of Ramsay. The rhythms of the house, in equal banal and exasperating parts, are what gives the film its power. You are constantly looking for a way out, but none has come when the film continues to reach a feeling of silent tension until you can barely bear it. Even if it is not the best film in Ramsay, even a minor work of the filmmaker is always better than any other director. There remains a haunting power that she is able to handle her audience.
