A never-better Jennifer Lawrence voices Die, My Love's feral scream

“We should get a cat.” This is among the first things one hears Jennifer Lawrence’s untamed Grace mutter in Lynne Ramsay’s feral, kaleidoscopic, and gorgeously unhinged Die, My Love, a scream of a film about feminine cravings gone unmet, that then explode. 

In her most fearless performances to date—the unbraced sinks and prenatal freak-outs of Mother! have nothing on her no-holds-barred turn in Ramsay’s psychosexual marital thriller—Lawrence delivers this line to her husband Jackson (a loose-limbed, unforgettable Robert Pattinson) as they inspect an isolated house that has seen better days. Framed in cinematographer Seamus McGarvey’s boxy aspect ratio, the couple peeks into the derelict space that is now their home, one that spans like train compartments in front of them, with three layers of differently patterned, retro floral wallpapers. There is a rat situation, and a feline hunter is necessary.

But who needs a cat when you have a restless Lawrence swinging for the fences on all fours, crawling, inspecting, sniffing, and scratching everything around her like an agile cheetah as she goes off the deep end in the middle of nowhere? She emits an instantly captivating and dangerous energy. That’s perhaps why Jackson had fallen in love with her in the first place. There is never any doubt that Grace has a larger-than-life, unapologetically insatiable sexual appetite, one that Jackson happily fulfills; the couple gets lost in one another’s bodies across Ramsay’s heightened and steamy intimacy scenes. Indeed, these former New Yorkers now in the sticks are so hot for each other that they can set a forest on fire—a metaphoric occurrence that Ramsay and McGarvey vividly bring to life as a bookend to their colorful movie.

Or perhaps that fire belonged only to Grace all along. Over the course of Ramsay’s plunge into the depths of womanhood and motherhood, Grace’s rural life and pregnancy slowly try to put out that fire. The hardworking and increasingly removed Jackson leaves her alone for long stretches, and their once-adventurous times under the bedsheets (and on hardwood floors and pretty much everywhere in the house that they fancy) come to a damning halt. Grace wonders if Jackson is having an affair during his long absences. Similarly, the audience wonders if an alluring biker she is obsessed with (LaKeith Stanfield) is real, or a figment of her imagination. If Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance unleashed an aging woman’s internal battles, Die, My Love releases a fury born of feminine unfulfillment, escalated by postpartum depression and loneliness. As such, the unbearably, deliciously rude Grace is a conduit for many women’s unspoken grudges, as she sinks her claws deep into Ramsay’s tale (co-written by Enda Walsh and based on an Ariana Harwicz book) and cuts it open.