Jennifer Lawrence in Die, My Love: a slap in the face at Cannes

A disturbing film, a breathtaking role: Jennifer Lawrence marks an incandescent return to the Croisette.

An intense psychological drama by Lynne Ramsay

Presented in official competition at Cannes, Die, My Love adaptsAriana Harwicz ‘s novel in a style as visceral as it is dreamlike. Directed by Lynne Ramsay, the film plunges into the torments of a young mother, Grace, played by Jennifer Lawrence, in the grip of a post-partum depression as chilling as it is incomprehensible.

Alongside Robert Pattinson (Jackson) as the overwhelmed husband and Sissy Spacek as the mute spectator mother-in-law, Lawrence plays a woman on the brink of the abyss, in an isolated Montana house, far removed from their New York life of yesteryear. The Scottish filmmaker deploys a powerful visual grammar of temporal ruptures, hallucinations, weighty silences and sensory landscapes.

A masterful performance of pain and dark humor

Jennifer Lawrence delivers one of her most radical performances here, oscillating between biting lucidity and loss of control. Her face, captured in bluish lights, says it all without a word: exhaustion, rage, solitude. The contrast between the beauty of the images and the inner violence of his character creates a disconcerting effect. The camera literally embraces his fragmented consciousness, his crises, his withdrawals.

The film offers no way out, no appeasement. It refuses the comfort of a healing story, preferring to draw us into Grace’s psychological ambiguity. The viewer is drawn in, disoriented, and that’s precisely the point. Ramsay doesn’t judge. She exposes, with disturbing honesty.

A shock film that divides and fascinates

Some will criticize Die, My Love for its narrative repetition, but here it serves to build unbearable tension. This isn’t a family drama, it’s a raw sensory experience, where we guess that every crisis is an attempt to break away… or to emancipate.

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