Die My Love Trailer: Jennifer Lawrence Delivers Intense Postpartum Nightmare for Lynne Ramsay

Trailer for Die My Love, Courtesy of Black Label Media/Mubi

“Die My Love,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to rapturous reviews and a six-minute standing ovation, is the fifth film by director Lynne Ramsay (hailed in the trailer as a “visionary director”), who has spent her quarter-century-long career making acclaimed dramas and thrillers that often feature strong psychological elements. Noted films of hers include the 2011 mother-son drama “We Need to Talk about Kevin” and 2018’s “You Were Never Really Here,” a neo-noir thriller starring Joaquin Phoenix as a psychologically tormented rescuer of young sexual-trafficking victims.

In “Die My Love,” the roles of the lead wife and husband have gone to Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, respectively. Lawrence – the Academy Award-winning star of “Silver Linings Playbook,” “The Hunger Games” quadrilogy, and “No Hard Feelings” – is certainly far from a newcomer, but her performance in “Die My Love” has already been singled out as one of the best she’s ever given.

Pattinson rose to prominence as Edward Cullen in “The Twilight Saga” and has also starred in the films of such auteurs as Claire Denis, Robert Eggers, and Christopher Nolan. In Eggers’s 2019 surrealist horror film “The Lighthouse,” Pattinson showcased the kind of acting chops that would make him a strong casting choice for his role in “Die My Love”: he turned in a very dynamic performance – at once relatable and increasingly unhinged – as a protagonist trapped in another extremely toxic (non-romantic) relationship.

Even the supporting cast of “Die My Love” is amazingly star-studded, as it includes Nick Nolte, Lakeith Stanfield, and Sissy Spacek. Spacek features in the trailer, but the nature of her character is undefined.

A Disorienting Drama, Thrillingly Acted and Too Bizarre to be Predictable

The most recent trailer for “Die My Love” is admirable for revealing very little beyond the film’s essential premise. Lawrence and Pattinson play a couple who seem happy together at first. However, we soon learn that she’s a writer who is suffering from a severe case of writer’s block, which may be related to her increasingly distant and tense relationship with him.

At first, they’re musing aloud about how long it’s been since they last had sex, but no more than 15 seconds later (in trailer time) they’re literally snarling at each other with mutual rage. Most of the rest of the trailer consists of a series of unconnected clips depicting deranged behavior, sinister images, and evidence of imminent devastation.

On the basis of such a trailer, it’s impossible to say with confidence whether Lawrence truly turns in the career-best performance that many enthusiastic Cannes critics have claimed. However, she certainly doesn’t appear below par, and it’s clear that both she and Pattinson are nothing if not committed to their roles.

“Die My Love” is the kind of film for which such go-for-broke performances are not only called for, but requisite: whatever the precise psychological nature of their mounting toxicity, it’s obvious that there’s no limit to how unhinged the actions of these two characters will become. Moreover, thanks to the trailer’s refreshing vagueness combined with the film’s core of insanity, it’s impossible to predict just what will come of their noxious interactions. “Die My Love” promises to be a psychological thriller more unsettling and surreal than most, and it may well come to represent Jennifer Lawrence’s finest hour.