Die My Love

             Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson in “Die My Love.” Kimberly French photo via IMDb.com

Jennifer Lawrence is getting all the media buzz for her fearless, bare-it-all portrayal of a young mother losing her mind in “Die My Love.” But it's hardly a one-woman show.

Besides Robert Pattinson as her well-intentioned but feckless husband, and icons Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte in the supporting ranks, almost everything else on the screen becomes a co-star under Lynne Ramsey's haunting direction.

A ramshackle, ghosty Montana farmhouse is almost as much a character in the story as the New York transplants Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Pattinson) who move in after he inherits it from his recently deceased uncle. 

Grace and Jackson make love and engage in hand-to-hand combat – sometimes you can't tell which is which – in these spooky environs that have their own gruesome back story. The mood is eerie. It's as though the house is watching them, director-co-writer Ramsey told one interviewer.

But it's not just the house. Horses and woodland creatures in the night. Weeds in the meadows glistening in the sunlight. Straight black two-lane highways through golden fields. Everything is foreboding thanks to cinematographer Seamus McGarvey's superb camerawork.

It gets harder and harder to tell whether the setting is really that scary, or if each of its components is just a dark mirror of Grace's degenerating state of mind, which becomes more maternal but less stable after the birth of their son.

Postpartum depression explains some of what Grace is going through, but not all. In her past life she was a writer, and Jackson promises their rural, remote new digs are just the place to write the Great American novel. 

Well, so much for that, as boredom on a monumental scale replaces Grace's creative spark.

Adapted from Ariana Harwicz's novel, and transplanted from France to rural Montana (actually filmed in Canada), something got lost in translation on the way to the screen. Grace's personality is prickly at best. You praise her baby, or even tell her to have a nice day, at your own peril. 

As much as it's those postpartum hormones talking, there's also the problem that nothing in these new surroundings, beginning with her husband and even his salt-of-the-earth mother (Sissy Spacek) is capable of stimulating her intellect. Grace is too smart for her own good.

The script feels more fever dream than straight narrative. Scenes happen out of order; characters appear randomly, the way they do in thought and memory. Lawrence was several months pregnant during the filming, something we're reminded of by her many nude scenes. But we need to pay attention to be sure of what 's happening when …

Lawrence's performance is brave and shattering. Not only is her capacity for self-destruction alarming, but the collateral wreckage of her marriage bounces from bleak to excruciating. It's like Ingmar Bergman for a new millennium. “Die My Love” is often difficult to watch, but you can't take your eyes away, either … like witnessing a car wreck in slow motion.

It may have something to do with Grace's caustic humor, but somehow “Die My Love” falls into that strange catch-all category Dark Comedy among its other labels on the Internet Movie Database.

Good luck finding much to laugh about … although the soundtrack does make excellent use of the John Prine-Iris Dement classic duet “In Spite of Ourselves.”

In spite of ourselves, we'll end up a-sittin on a rainbow

Against all odds, honey, we're the big door prize

We're gonna spite our noses right off of our faces

There won't be nothin' but big old hearts dancin' in our eyes