We take a look at what is being said about Lynne Ramsay’s film based on the book by Ariana Harwicz and starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.
The Guardian: **** “It hardly needs to be said that subtlety is not really among this film’s attributes – but it is fierce, angry, engaged, and intensely, sensually alert to every detail of its own pleasure and pain.”
Empire: **** “Lynne Ramsay’s raw and animalistic character study proves to be the perfect vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence. She’s never been better as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
Roger Ebert.com: *** 1/2 “None of this is easy, and not much of it is fun. But “Die My Love” is a wild and worthwhile ride.”
IGN.com: “Lawrence is exceptional and deserves attention during awards season, which is not to downplay Pattinson’s brutally defenseless turn or Spacek’s handling of elderly wisdom. Ramsay shoots her narrative from the hip, which can be scattershot, but when Die My Love connects, it’s a bullet to the heart.”
BFI.org.uk: “Die My Love is a different, snarling animal, that finds Ramsay and Lawrence in ferociously maximalist sync, conspiring without compromise on making us feel like a character who, above all, above anything, does not want to feel this way: in love with herself, in fear for herself and in desperate, spitting, spite of herself.”
Variety: “By the time “Die My Love” reaches its voluptuously incendiary yet somehow rather rote ending, you may wish you were watching a different movie.”
The Arts Desk: “An eclectic soundtrack lends the film an array of intriguing colours. John Prine and Iris Dement singing “In Spite of Ourselves” – “She’s my baby, I’m her honey / I’m never gonna let her go” – is like an ironic mirage of the life they ought to be living, while a deafening blast of Eric Clapton’s Cream playing “Crossroads” is like a metaphorical car crash. Boldly, there’s a version of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” over the end credits, sung by director Anderson herself. In the end, the message might be, “if it’s broke, you cain’t fix it.””
BBC.com: *** “Ramsay’s film-making flair lights up scene after scene, but as the narrative fragments, and reality and fantasy blur, you’re left with the urge to read the novel to find out what’s actually happening. The film may have communicated its heroine’s boredom and bewilderment a little too effectively.”
Time Out: ***** “All the cast feel totally ingrained in Ramsay’s storytelling, but it’s Lawrence who’s wildly impressive. Ramsay excels in getting inside the heads of forceful, damaged, strange characters, and it’s Grace’s world she has built here. It’s a world of terror, passion, destruction and constant hope that things can be better again. It’s a deeply raw and honest film. It’s bleak, but it also has a musical, black-comic, big-hearted spirit that pulls you through the despair.”
The Hollywood Reporter: “It’s easier to feel something for Jackson, played by Pattinson with sensitivity and a touching spirit of forgiveness as he slides into despair. Asking Grace to marry him when she’s at her batshit craziest — truly a WTF? move — is an even bigger mistake than the dog, given that drunken weddings tend to make people shed their inhibitions. Or whatever Grace has left of them.”
Deadline: “America knows very well how good Jennifer Lawrence can be, and this could well mean a fifth Oscar nomination if it lands in savvy hands. It could also be the film that takes Ramsay into the next stage of her career. As producer Martin Scorsese well knows, she’s a genius. And now, it turns out — goddammit — she can sing.”
Die My Love is out in cinemas now.