Jennifer Lawrence gives everything to Die My Love
Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s novel Die, My Love is a raw and compelling portrayal of a life unraveling. Ramsay takes Harwicz’s intense narrative and transforms it into a haunting cinematic journey through mental breakdown and suppressed rage.
“How valuable they are depends on how highly we rank the expression of experience with which we can in no sense identify, and from which we can only turn with shock and sorrow.”
— Philip Larkin, reviewing Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems
Harwicz’s original novel, first published in 2012, tells the story of an unnamed woman—an expatriate in the French countryside—whose frustration and despair consume her. Once a writer, she now resents her domestic life and the burden of caring for her baby. Her hatred toward her husband, whom she perceives as inadequate, drives her into an affair with a married neighbor.
“A breath of irrationality had set fire to my existence.”
Following confinement in a hospital, she appears calmer, yet an eruption at her son’s second birthday reveals her inner chaos once again.
“I hope you all die, every last one of you… Just die, my love.”
Labeled as suffering from postpartum psychosis, the narrator’s fury and alienation still defy simple explanation. Even in a time when stories of motherhood’s darker sides are more prevalent, Die, My Love stands out as one of the most visceral and shocking portraits of female despair.
Author’s Summary
A fierce, unflinching exploration of maternal rage and alienation, Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Harwicz’s Die, My Love captures the agony of a woman breaking beneath the weight of her own emotions.