{"id":256987,"date":"2025-11-02T16:19:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T16:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/256987\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T16:19:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T16:19:07","slug":"jennifer-lawrences-die-my-love-could-have-been-a-cliche-but-in-her-hands-it-feels-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/256987\/","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer Lawrence\u2019s Die My Love could have been a clich\u00e9, but in her hands, it feels real"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Jennifer Lawrence poses during a photocall for the film Die, My Love at the 73rd San Sebastian International Film Festival, in Spain, on Sept. 26.Pankra Nieto\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Watching the new film Die My Love, I could feel my arteries sizzling. Where had a woman like this been all my life? <\/p>\n

Grace (Jennifer Lawrence, never better) has just moved to rural Montana with a man she loves, Jackson (Robert Pattinson), to be near his parents (Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte). Jackson is enthralled by Grace\u2019s enormous life force, even when \u2013 or maybe because \u2013 she colours so far outside the lines that she obliterates the lines. They have a baby, whom they adore. Yet Grace has the audacity to still be itchy, frustrated, angry. <\/p>\n

She gave up her writing career in New York; now she\u2019s stuck between \u201cwanting to do something and not wanting to do anything at all.\u201d When no one seems to hear her, when nothing changes, black clouds crowd inside her until the only recourse she sees is to smash things up and burn them down. <\/p>\n

At least that\u2019s the movie I saw. Director Lynne Ramsay, who co-wrote the screenplay with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, based on a novel by Ariana Harwicz, is expert at giving audiences characters, situations and emotions, then leaving the interpretation to us. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve wanted to work with Lynne my entire adult life,\u201d Lawrence, 35 and a mother of two herself, said in a recent interview. \u201cShe\u2019s fearless. She\u2019s not worried about the audience: \u2018This is the ride, get on or get out.\u2019\u201d So when Lawrence read Harwicz\u2019s novel \u2013 she finished it the day she received it \u2013 Ramsay was the only director she wanted. <\/p>\n

\u201cI understood how profound it was, but also that it would be challenging to film, because it\u2019s all Grace\u2019s inner life,\u201d Lawrence says. \u201cThe interpretation would have to be more poetic than literal, and the most poetic director I can possibly think of is Lynne.\u201d Now Lawrence takes her place alongside other unforgettable Ramsay women, including Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin) and Samantha Morton (Morvern Callar). <\/p>\n

The person who sent Lawrence the novel was none other than Martin Scorsese. \u201cHe read it in his book club, which is precious,\u201d she says. (Oh, to be a fly on that wall.) \u201cIt\u2019s so telling of Marty\u2019s emotional capacity that the story struck him. It is mind-blowing that I was in his mind. Seeing his name pop up on my phone still gets me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mind-blowing describes Lawrence, too. From the moment a scout plucked her, at the age of 14, out of a New York crowd (she was visiting from Kentucky with her parents), her talent has been undeniable, her personality singular \u2013 funny, raunchy, outspoken, bold. She racked up a record-setting four Oscar nominations by the age of 26, winning for Silver Linings Playbook. Since 2018, she\u2019s headed a production company, Excellent Cadaver; in addition to Die My Love (which was shot around Calgary), the company has made the drama Causeway, the comedy No Hard Feelings and two urgent documentaries that echo Lawrence\u2019s commitment to women\u2019s rights. Bread and Roses, about Afghani women\u2019s lives in the wake of the 2021 Taliban takeover, was nominated for an Emmy and won a Peabody. Zurawski v Texas, about a reproductive rights case in Texas, was co-produced by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done some movies that are more literal about my beliefs \u2013 The Hunger Games, rising up against tyranny,\u201d Lawrence says. \u201cDie My Love is less literal, but it does explore and remind us about this new concept, that mothers are humans.\u201d (She\u2019s being wry, but she means it.) \u201cIt reminds us that taking care of children and looking after a house is an exhausting, full-time job. It\u2019s extreme manual labour \u2013 it\u2019s just unpaid manual labour.\u201d <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Jennifer Lawrence poses for pictures in San Sebastian, Spain, in September.ANDER GILLENEA\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Lawrence is known for not living in character. She\u2019s not sure if that\u2019s a matter of craft \u201cor just an ADHD mind,\u201d but when she gets in the car to leave work, \u201cI forget that I\u2019m even going to have to act the next day,\u201d she says. \u201cI let go completely. I watch reality TV, Veep, Dateline. And then the next morning I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh damn, what are we doing today?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She admits, however, that Grace demanded a lot of her. One interpretation of this story is that Grace is suffering from extreme postpartum depression. For me, that take\u2019s too limited. But whatever viewers think, \u201cthe moments with big emotion that have to do with her child were hard,\u201d Lawrence says. \u201cIt was not a nice feeling. They\u2019d call cut, I\u2019d get a little relief, and then I\u2019d have to do it again. I\u2019d know what\u2019s coming, and it got scarier and scarier every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the moments where she rages at Jackson? \u201cThose were really fun,\u201d she says. For a sequence where Grace trashes a room, Ramsay suggested she wear an earwig \u2013 a hidden earpiece \u2013 playing hard-core music. It\u2019s the first time Lawrence used music that way, and it felt true to Grace: \u201cThere\u2019s so much going on in her mind that\u2019s not matching what\u2019s happening on the outside. It was like physically putting the extra voices in her head.\u201d<\/p>\n

In lesser hands, Die My Love might have been a clich\u00e9: Husband is a jerk who\u2019s not helping with the baby, so wife gets, then goes, mad. Pattinson insisted on making Jackson even stronger than he was in the script, so he wasn\u2019t blown away by Grace. \u201cThat added so much more dimension,\u201d Lawrence says. \u201cThe challenges that happen in a relationship after a child \u2013 yes, they\u2019re universal, but they\u2019re also deeply complex.”<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than any movie I\u2019ve made, so much is left between the lines here for the audience to read,\u201d she continues. \u201cAll responses are valid. Maybe some of it is a fever dream, but when we were filming, I thought everything we see was real.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lawrence makes it feel real. A small piece of direction from Ramsay, in a scene where Grace rouses her sleeping baby just because she\u2019s bored, helped her get there. <\/p>\n

\u201cI told Lynne no one would ever do that, because there\u2019s no greater feeling than closing the door on your sleeping child,\u201d Lawrence recalls. In reply, Ramsay read aloud Jackson\u2019s line, \u201cYou kept the baby up?\u201d Then she read Grace\u2019s \u2013 \u201cYeah. So?\u201d \u2013 off-handedly. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe just shrugged it off,\u201d Lawrence says. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t how I\u2019d been reading it. That unlocked so much of Grace for me \u2013 her being matter-of-fact about things that are strange. Her straightforward following of her impulses without questioning them. That is opposite to how I live my day-to-day life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is? \u201cCarefully,\u201d she replies. \u201cI certainly try to be in control of my emotions, so my emotions don\u2019t control me. I try to be conscientious of the lives around me and think about cause and effect.\u201d But here comes that wicked Jennifer Lawrence grin. \u201cWhich was why it was so fun to live out those intrusive thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Jennifer Lawrence poses during a photocall for the film Die, My Love at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75,2922,119272],"class_list":{"0":"post-256987","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-noastack","12":"tag-streamingbestof"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}