MUBI goes wide, sans platform release, this weekend with Lynne Ramsay’s psychosexual postpartum frenzy “Die My Love” in theaters around the country. It’s the distributor and streamer’s widest release since “The Substance” took a similar trajectory last year, ultimately earning more than $17 million in the U.S.
The film stars Jennifer Lawrence in a performance as confrontational and abrasive as the one she gave in Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!” Here, she plays a sputtering-out writer suffering depression and psychosis after giving birth to her first child. Lawrence, who was in the second trimester of her second pregnancy while filming, shot the movie in Calgary, Canada, with co-stars Robert Pattinson (who plays her hapless husband), Sissy Spacek, Nick Nolte, and LaKeith Stanfield.
Some minor editorial reshapings were done, as Ramsay explained to IndieWire in a recent interview, since the movie premiered at Cannes in May. “Die My Love” is not going to repeat horror movie “The Substance’s” box office numbers by any means for MUBI, but the point of the wide release isn’t that: It’s to lure more subscribers to its arthouse streaming platform.
Screen Talk podcast hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio reassess “Die My Love” post-Cannes on this week’s episode. Lawrence has to knock out one in a stacked deck of Best Actress Oscar contenders — Jessie Buckley, Renate Reinsve, Emma Stone, Rose Byrne, and Cynthia Erivo — to make it into the final five.
Elsewhere on this week’s episode, we also look at the state of the race for Netflix’s slate of awards contenders, with Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” rising among Academy voters Anne has spoken to as the movie enters its first weekend of streaming. Anne and Ryan both have a good feeling about “Train Dreams” scoring a Best Actor Oscar nomination and a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar. “Jay Kelly” is also playing well for hometown industry voters, and up against another industry movie but one flung to Norway, Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value.” Netflix’s “A House of Dynamite,” meanwhile, has struggled since playing festivals after Venice despite strong streaming showings in the Netflix top 10 the last two weeks.
Listen to the podcast in the episode below.