Jennifer Lawrence goes for broke in 'Die, My Love'

A primal punk spirit rages through Lynne Ramsay's “Die, My Love,” a jagged, go-for-broke psychodrama starring Jennifer Lawrence as an increasingly unhinged new mother and Robert Pattinson as her husband. In this cauldron of marital nightmare, set in a ramshackle rural Montana home, there are fires, real and imagined, and a variety of wildlife. There’s an incessantly yapping dog, brought home by Jackson (Pattinson) shortly after the couple move in from New York. There's a horse in the road, inopportunely. And on the shirt on Grace (Lawrence) is a tiger. But, more than these animalistic flourishes, there is Grace, herself. In a moment early in the film, she prowls on all fours through tall grass, with a knife in her hand.

- Associated Press

The shorthand description of Ramsay's film, adapted from a 2012 novel by the Argentine writer Ariana Harwicz, is that it's about a woman with postpartum depression. But that's not quite right. It's more about the power and urges of a woman who, like a beautiful, feral creature, is not taking to domestication. That's the appealing through line of “Die, My Love,” though it can be difficult to firmly grasp it in Ramsay's piercing but tediously overamplified character study. Still, as unkempt and overwrought as “Die, My Love” is, it’s not a movie that's timidly weighing in on parenting and gender roles.

There’s plenty to admire in Ramsay's uncompromising and delirious portrait of marital hell, particularly in the bracingly raw performance of Lawrence. The abandon with which she throws herself into the role is enough to make you exclaim “Mother!”