Reviewing Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems, Philip Larkin affirmed that her last pieces were original and effective but then added: “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.”
Die, My Love, the acclaimed debut novel by Ariana Harwicz, an Argentinian writer living in France, published in 2012, is just such a shocker. Its unnamed narrator, assuming all the voices in the novel, proclaims her rage, contempt and frustrated desire, as she lets us know about her life. She is a foreigner in the French countryside – a stalled writer, angered by having to look after her new baby. She despises her husband for his sexual inadequacy, while she carries on an affair with a married neighbour. She becomes feral. “A breath of irrationality had set fire to my existence,” she announces. After a spell in hospital, she seems calmer but erupts again at her son’s second birthday party: “I hope you all die, every last one of you… Just die, my love.”
A diagnosis of postpartum psychosis doesn’t quite suffice. Even among the wave of books and films (last year’s Nightbitch being one of the dafter) by and about women owning up to finding motherhood alienating or worse, Die, My Love is extreme. “A Molotov cocktail,” Harwicz calls it, the theme being nothing less than choosing Being, capital B, over merely being a mother/wife/lover. A lifesaver: “I always say that I was born when I wrote Die, My Love.”
Martin Scorsese read the translation after seeing a brief review in the Guardian and thought of Jennifer Lawrence for the role, telling her it was a challenge, just the kind of thing she should be doing. She liked the idea and developed it through her production company, naming the character Grace, relocating the story to Montana, casting Robert Pattinson as the husband, and, critically, recruiting Lynne Ramsay to direct.
So here, eight years after You Were Never Really Here, is Lynne Ramsay’s fifth feature, in succession to the equally remarkable Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar and We Need to Talk about Kevin – a series of other projects having been abandoned by this uncompromising director. Die My Love is a quite extraordinary film, which is loyal to its source, save in one respect: the baby, a prime target of his mother’s rage in the novel, is here unproblematically loved. When the film was premiered at Cannes, Ramsay was infuriated by its reception as a drama of post-natal depression. “This whole postpartum thing is just bullshit,” she said. “It’s not about that, it’s about a relationship breaking down, love breaking down…”
Grace, hoping to write the great American novel, and boyfriend Jackson, planning to record a great album, arrive at the spacious but run-down house in the country. They’re all over each other at first but, seemingly in no time, Grace has a baby and all that stops, to her frustration and fury. Jackson’s widowed mother (Sissy Spacek, marvellous) is supportive and sympathetic to Grace, who nevertheless becomes increasingly isolated, enraged by Jackson’s laziness and incomprehension. “Where are you, Grace?” he asks. “I’m right here – you just don’t see me”, she retorts.
“When was the last time we had sex?” she demands in one of the many driving scenes. “A month,” he says. “Try two and a half.” “I’m going to put more of an effort in,” he pledges. She demands that he has sex with her in the car as soon as they get home. He can’t. “You impotent piece of shit, you useless fucking faggot,” she shrieks. Neither her biker lover (LaKeith Stanfield) nor restless masturbation help. Jackson brings home an annoying, barky dog. She shoots it.
Jennifer Lawrence, who made the film while four months pregnant with her second child, is tremendous here. She is totally committed, her extraordinary face often seen not just in extreme close-up but right into the iris of the eye, as she departs further and further from reality and her family. In comparison, Robert Pattinson is called upon to be little more than a beery bro, hopelessly unable to understand her, so that all of the emotion of the film originates with Grace.
Die My Love, shot in portrait ratio by Seamus McGarvey, confirms Grace’s experience, however off the wall. As director, Lynne Ramsay is behind her all the way. Over the end credits, Ramsay herself sings Joy Division’s imperishable “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, just in case we could have missed that. No turning away here.
“Die My Love” is in cinemas now
[Further reading: West End Girl and the price of oversharing]
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This article appears in the 06 Nov 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Exposed: Britain's next maternity scandal