Lawrence in Die My Love: As Subtle as a Jet Engine in a Church

Every so often, a film arrives that doesn’t simply invite you into its world; it drags you in by the collar, locks the door, and refuses to let you look away. Die My Love (2025) is one of those films. Raw, unsettling, and violently intimate, it’s a cinematic experience that grips your chest like a vice and squeezes until you’re forced to confront the darkest corners of the human mind.

At the centre of this inferno is Jennifer Lawrence, delivering what is arguably the most ferocious performance of her career. Forget everything you’ve seen from her before — the charm, the precision, the controlled chaos. Here, she is an open wound, walking through rural isolation with a simmering rage and despair so potent it practically seeps through the screen. Lawrence doesn’t portray the protagonist; she inhabits her with a frightening level of emotional authenticity. It’s the kind of performance that seasoned critics describe as “career-defining” because saying anything else would be a disservice.

Directed by Lucía Puenzo, the film adapts Ariana Harwicz’s cult novel with a commitment to emotional brutality rarely seen in mainstream cinema. Puenzo refuses to sanitise the story. She gives us long, claustrophobic shots, silence that feels like a threat, and landscapes that look beautiful until you realise how trapped the protagonist feels within them. Every frame is a battleground between a woman and her mind — and we’re dragged into the trenches with her.

The plot follows Lawrence’s unnamed character as she struggles with motherhood, marriage, and the suffocating expectations of rural life. There’s no neat structure or comforting moral. Instead, the film offers a series of emotional shocks, confessions, and psychological unravelling that mirror the protagonist’s fractured state. It’s disorienting deliberately so. This isn’t a film that wants to be understood; it wants to be felt.

Supporting performances are strong across the board. The husband, played with painful restraint by Paul Mescal, becomes the silent witness to a crisis he cannot comprehend, let alone control. The chemistry between Mescal and Lawrence is electric in the most uncomfortable way — two people attached by duty but separated by galaxies.

Visually, the film is stunning in a way you almost resent. Wide shots of fields, trees, and sunlit fog create a false serenity that clashes brutally with the protagonist’s inner storm. It’s as though nature itself is mocking her, offering beauty she can’t access.

Watching Die My Love is a bit like being strapped into a sports car with the traction control turned off, the tyres bald, and the driver gleefully shouting, “Hold on!” as you fishtail into emotional disaster. It’s wild, it’s terrifying, and halfway through you’ll wonder why you didn’t choose a nice, safe comedy instead. But you can’t deny the craftsmanship. The thing handles like a monster, yet it’s engineered with brutal precision.

The film’s one flaw; if you can call ambition a flaw,  is that it demands emotional stamina. This is not popcorn cinema. There is no soft landing. You don’t watch Die My Love; you endure it. And yet, when the credits roll, you feel oddly grateful for the bruises it leaves behind.

Verdict
Die My Love is a masterpiece of psychological cinema unflinching, aggressive, and unapologetically human. Jennifer Lawrence delivers an astonishing, awards-season-devouring performance, and Puenzo’s direction turns the story into something both devastating and hypnotic.

It’s not a film for everyone. But for those willing to step into the darkness, it is one of the most powerful cinematic experiences of 2025.