Review: "Die My Love"

Jennifer Lawrence’s career began at a relatively early age with movies like X-Men: First Class (2011) and The Hunger Games (2012).  For me, her real breakout film was David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook (2012) co-starring Bradley Cooper.  Her performance earned her an Oscar for Best Actress. 

I have been a fan ever since watching her take on a number of roles, playing a variety of characters.  She’s a talented actress.  Often, talented actresses like to take on challenging roles just to test their acting chops. Sometimes it works (2013’s American Hustle, directed by David O. Russell) and sometimes it doesn’t (2017’s Mother, directed by Darren Aronofsky). 

No one in Hollywood has a string of unbroken hits.  Even when you were the highest-paid actress in the world back in 2015 and 2016 starring in movies that grossed over $5.5 billion.

Jennifer Lawrence is back in a movie adaptation of the best-selling novel “Die My Love” by Ariana Harwicz.

 She plays a troubled young woman trying to deal with postpartum depression and psychosis.  It’s a serious medical topic.  Here, it becomes the dark force driving a contemporary psycho-drama.

Lawrence’s character, Grace is an attractive young writer with a handsome boyfriend Jackson (Robert Pattinson) and a voracious sexual appetite.  They move to a deserted old house in the country, have smokin’ hot sex that later results in the birth of a beautiful baby boy.  Life would seem idyllic, but Grace soon finds herself becoming bored and lonely after Jackson is away working for days at a time.  She begins to unravel, slowly at first, but it is clear that she is increasingly coming apart emotionally.

Tensions between her and Jackson escalate and hit the breaking point when he comes home one day with a frisky black puppy.  The dog does all the things young puppies do including barking 24-7.  Grace tells Jackson to shoot the dog, and when he refuses she takes the dog out in the middle of a field and blows its brains out with a rifle. 

The mistreatment of animals in movies is a topic that I find troubling.  It’s an effective way to establish a deranged villain such as the guy who stomps Keanu Reeve’s puppy to death in the first John Wick movie. 

For the record, I read about the scene and refused to see the movie.  I still have not seen it to this day, though I did come aboard for the over-the-top action sequels that didn’t include scenes of animals being killed.  Wick’s trusty canine survives all the shooting and violence.

Cruelty to animals is disgusting, whether it involves fictional movie characters or real-life politicians who brag about executing a dog in a gravel pit.  We live in a violent culture and an entertainment world that relies on murder and death more than we perhaps imagine.  That includes movies and television dramas. We have become comfortably numb to the preponderance violent content.

It raises the question about the inclusion of violent material that could inspire real life violence and cruelty.  You could argue that the killing of the dog in Die My Love is unnecessary.  So many other scenes establish Grace’s deepening insanity.

Case in point, Grace disrobes at a children’s party at a friend’s house and jumps into the backyard pool wearing only her bikini underwear.  It’s an embarrassing, humiliating act that is one of the turning points of the story.  It didn’t involve murder.

Eventually Grace receives some medical treatment, though you wonder why it took so long. Even that doesn’t resolve her turmoil.  Die My Love is not a movie with a sugar-coated happy ending.  As mentioned, post-partum recovery is a very serious issue.  Shedding light on it is admirable but here it only provides a story premise that allows the lead actress to have a field day acting strange, kooky and eventually terrifying.

Lawrence dives deep into the role.  Her performance is erratic and intense.  It’s riveting.  You sense that she’s having fun exploring the mind of her character.  As was the case with her performance in Mother, it’s not a lot fun to watch.

You can’t rule out an Oscar nomination for Jennifer Lawrence’s performance in Die My Love.  She puts it all out there.  Pattinson is also strong, as are the supporting roles played by Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte.

Their fans will probably show up and buy tickets.  There is a good chance that audiences in general might shy away from this dark, dramatic downer.