DIE, MY LOVE Review: Shaking the Bars of the Not-So-Gilded Cage. Then Setting the Cage on Fire.

It's a dull, cloudy day in rural Montana, and Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) is pushing her baby in his stroller, down the country road, to get to the closest point of civilization: the gas station with attached grocery store. All she wants is a a box of mac and cheese, but the check-out girl is being extra friendly and inquisitive. Not a bad thing in theory, but Grace gives zero fucks. She has nothing to do but walk miles for junk food and she has no qualms about telling this girl that she does not matter in Grace's world. But then again, Grace feels like she herself doesn't matter anymore.

This is not Lynne Ramsay's first journey into the mind of a woman trapped by societal expectations (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin), and she has only increased the intensity of the emotional and psychological roller coaster. While other filmmakers might have come before to shed light on the myth of a woman's domestic bliss, with Die, My Love, Ramsay and Lawrence thoroughly rip it to shreds and set it on fire.

Grace is in Montana since her partner Jackson (Robert Pattinson) moved them to his late uncle's house. He's a wannabe musician, she's a wannabe writer; they came from New York for undisclosed reasons (perhaps cost of living), and Jackson assures Grace that here, with no distractions, she can write the Great American Novel while he works and practices his drums. Their apparent non-stop horniness means Grace is soon pregnant, and while his mother Pam (Sissy Spacek) is nearby in the country sense, Jackson spends all day working far from home, leaving Grace to shoulder the parenting.

Was hot sex all Grace and Jackson every had in common? Is the lack of sex post-baby all Grace can think about? No, but it's the starting point; as women are forced into roles that see them as little more than a housekeeper/mother, reclamation of satisfaction via the body manifests quickly. Grace suspects Jackson is getting satisfaction elsewhere, so she begins to seek it as well. A man riding a motorcycle drives by her house more and more frequently, and understandable, given that Grace has no car and therefore no means of escape, so why wouldn't she fantasize about this mystery man (and he, her).

As something of modern retelling and homage to A Woman Under the Influence, then, this is about how Grace's growing anger ands frustration manifests. Perhaps because she is younger, she is isolated, with only Jackson's friends and family to rely on (and then they are still mostly inaccessible), Grace reverts to her instincts: she howls and scratches, she prowls and yells, she has no use for any kind of socially acceptable filter for her words or actions. If she has to walk miles to see another human face, she will do it. She is not unkind to her dementia-suffering father-in-law (Nick Nolte) or Pam, perhaps recognizing in the latter some of the same regretted life decisions, but as she finds herself trapped and giving up on her dreams through boredom and cynicism, why not express herself exactly as her body and mind instinctually tell her to.

Pam is lost as well; most of her life has been centred on what she was to men: first her father, then her husband, then her son, and perhaps now, her grandson. While Grace might move with purpose, Pam sleepwalks the country roads, as if her body wants to do what Grace's does, but she does not quite speak the language. Spacek gives an understated but simmering performance of a woman perhaps too old for Grace's level of anger and action, but she can, at least, silently approve.

Lawrence's breakout role in Winter's Bone was as a substitute mother for her siblings, then her arguably biggest role in the Hunger Games series again saw her sacrifice, again and again, in her motherly way for a sibling. In this case, she's something of an unnatural mother. Not that Grace doesn't love her but, but if she was truly given a fair choice, knowing what she would be signing up for, she likely would not have said yes. It does take a village, and Grace has none, not even her husband, and the friends that are the close are Jackson's and don't understand why a woman doesn't love being a mother.

So Lawrence lets out Grace's anger, her pain, her horniness, and wears it with her plaid shirts, white linen nightgowns, and ugly loafers. She lusts after a stranger because that's the person who seems to want her for something other than her breastmilk. We've seen Lawrence play powerful before, but Ramsay gets the actor to tap into something primal and uninhibited in a way that Lawrence clearly relishes. Try as she might, Lawrence shows how Grace just isn't going to fit into the box that Jackson wants her in.

Pattinson does well as a modern guy that seems to want Grace to follow her dreams, but then all but abandons her to figure it out on her own. Maybe he's dealing with his own demons of lost youth and the burdens of parenthood, but he uses his male privilege to make Grace take on the burden that should be shared. Pattison plays out reveal of Jackson's true nature with evasive dialogue and affection meant to ease his own guilt.

Ramsay has never been a filmmaker to take her audience gently through her characters's emotional journeys, and she nearly always begins with the knife already proverbially under the skin, ready to peel away the final layer to their most vulnerable. Ramsay's films often feel like hauntings, but in this case, we are in the realm of the ghost, watching the world through the lens of someone who does not fit into this world they've cast into, and something at the edges never sits right. It's deeply unsettling, often uncomfortable, and yet impossible not to feel that knife under your skin, as if you might be want it there, as if you are sometimes peeking at a mirror.

Using the contrast of the wide Montana landscape in contrast with the proverbial prison growing smaller around Grace, Die, My Love is both Ramsay and her star Lawrence at their most angrily raw and immediate, screaming because no one has listened to them when they speak plainly. Sometimes only screaming and setting fire to the world will be enough.

Die My Love opens in theatres in the USA and Canada on Friday, November 7th.

Still photos by Kimberley French, courtesy of Mubi.