This year seems to be the year that filmmakers are making movies about postpartum depression. First there was “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” from writer/director Mary Bronstein and starring Rose Byrne and now from director Lynne Ramsay there is “Die My Love” starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.  The two films tackle a certain subject matter, but they both go about it in very different ways. Without spoiling any of the details, one of the movies is vastly better than the other from my humble perspective. I’ll get into the reasons why I feel “Die My Love” isn’t as good as the other movie I’ve mentioned here.

Grace (Jennifer Lawrence), an aspiring writer and Jackson (Robert Pattinson), a construction worker, moved to an old dilapidated home in the country adjacent to a sleepy little town. At first they have fun drinking, having sex and living the good life of young people. All the sex they have eventually caused them to have a little baby boy. Now, they have to start getting serious regarding their lives. Pattinson ‘s character goes to work full time, and Lawrence’s character becomes a stay at home mom. The problem is why she’s staying home with the baby. She starts to get bored. She doesn’t know what to do with all the free time she has away from her husband. She’s starving for sex which he doesn’t give her, and she starts to go crazy. 

This couple is like any other couple living their lives. They have the inlaws over for gatherings. They go to other friends’ houses for parties, and they even have various visits from Pattinson’s mother Pam (Sissy Spacek) to help break up the monotony for Lawrence’s character specifically. None of this works as she continues to go further and further into a state of craziness for lack of a better word. She becomes paranoid about her husband’s personal life. She starts to have dreams, and she even goes through phases of stripping down naked. Even going for walks with the baby doesn’t help her at all. Her husband doesn’t know how to help her either.

Without having a child, I can only imagine what a woman is going through regarding having to take care of children with a husband who isn’t always there. Being alone with a crying baby can’t be easy for anybody. Let alone a young woman who is used to her freedom. Ramsay puts the audience in the shoes of this woman in the best way she can. By making the character do all kinds of crazy things and showing the reactions from her husband. I was sitting watching this. And I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at times. She was doing stuff no ordinary mother in her situation would do. This film is based on the book from Ariana Harwicz, so there must be some basis in reality for this story. It was just hard for me to watch at times.

Lawrence is an Academy Award winning actress for her role in Silver Linings Playbook and she also starred in two big franchises in her career, The Hunger Games, which was very successful,  and the X-Men which was not. She has been a very good actress for years. She’s taken a bit of a break, though not doing as many films as earlier in her career. This one must have been a bit of a passion project for her. Working opposite Pattinson and with writer/director Lynne Ramsay could have been a draw for her. I give her credit for doing the best she can here, but I think this story didn’t translate to the big screen like she and Ramsay probably thought it would. Even in Ramsay’s kinetic style, it still didn’t work that well for me specifically. I honestly didn’t care for the character that much, and Lawrence didn’t do much to make me care about her either. She came across as more annoying than anything. 

Pattinson has been doing a lot of wacky roles lately. Mickey 17, The Batman,  and High Life, to name a few. He is trying to stretch his acting chops if you will. Doing different kinds of roles helps actors do that. Here, he plays a relatively straightforward character for him. A husband and father isn’t exactly the kind of role he’s been playing in his career thus far. He settles into this dual role quite nicely opposite Lawrence.They seem to be getting along on screen perfectly fine. He eventually starts to unravel because of the behavior of his wife, though, and like any husband/father doesn’t know what to do. It’s an interesting character for Pattinson to play because of the straightforward nature of him. He adds some stress and anger to the role, which makes the character his own in the end. I think any husband/father going through this with their wife would be pulling their hair out in this kind of relationship. He captures the stressfulness of the situation perfectly fine.

“Die My Love” isn’t going to be a movie for everybody. I may not be for husbands and wives in a similar situation as this either. It’s going to be for people who want to see two great actors doing normal and relatively everyday things. Despite the actions of the Lawrence character. I can’t say how it feels to be a woman or a mother, for that matter. I can only speculate what the characters are going through in this film. Sure I’ve had a mother and I know friends who’ve had children and so forth, but until you actually live the lives of these scenarios you don’t really know what these types of characters are going through. I can explain my thoughts on the movie, but that’s not going to define the exact nature of this situation and these two characters. I do understand the trouble this scenario can bring to a relationship, though. I can feel sorry for what they are going through. The film itself doesn’t explain the situation as well as I would’ve liked it to, though. For that reason, only I wasn’t on board with it that much compared to “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You “ , this other film about a similar topic that came out earlier this month.

2 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen