Lynne Ramsay is one of the few directors in official competition at Cannes 2025 with her new film, Die my Love, adapted from Ariana Harwicz's novel of the same name. A regular on the Cannes steps (she took home the Screenplay Prize and the Best Actor Award for Joaquin Phoenix with her film A Beautiful Day in 2017), the British filmmaker signs a searing film, the story of a young mother (played by Jennifer Lawrence) who gradually descends into madness.
The film begins with Grace, still happily married, moving in with her husband Jackson(Robert Pattinson) to a secluded house in the heart of the countryside. She is pregnant with their first child. We meet them again when their baby, Harry, is just a few months old. There's something wrong with the young woman, who's becoming bored and erratic. Jackson's mother (impeccable Sissy Spacek) calls it a day: she's suffering from post-partum depression.
Unease quickly sets in as his mental state deteriorates, and one shocking scene follows another, making the youngster fear the worst when his mother gets a little too close to him with a long knife, having just shot a dog in cold blood for barking too much and destroyed the wallpaper in his bathroom, not without tearing off her nails in the process.
Yet it is by limiting the young woman's madness to herself that Lynne Ramsay brings a suffocating tension to her work, right up to the last minute. The family home becomes a straitjacket, and only a trip to the hospital offers a brief glimmer of hope for this disintegrating couple.
Visually overwhelming (the cinematography is a thing of beauty), psychologically subversive, Die my Love shows madness as it can be - unexpected, raw, explosive, sad too - with Jennifer Lawrence's quite masterful performance. A film that stays with you the next day.
Die my love will be unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival 2025. The release date in French cinemas is not yet known.
Synopsis: In the countryside, a woman battles her own demons.
Cannes Festival 2025: Films in the Official Selection
Discover the official selection for the 78th Cannes Film Festival, held on the Croisette from May 13 to 24, 2025. [Read more]
Cannes Festival 2025: Films in the Official Selection
