- Content: “Love Without God Withers on the Vine”
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What You Need To Know:
Jennifer Lawrence delivers a standout performance in DIE MY LOVE. However, the movie never builds any strong sympathy for her character. The mother goes from one strange act to another, interspersed with periods of boredom. Some of her acts are violent, such as trashing a bathroom and emptying bottles on the floor. DIE MY LOVE has lots of strong foul language, explicit nudity, a scene of adultery, and other lewd behavior. DIE MY LOVE is unsatisfying, excessive and unacceptable.
Content:
Godless Romantic, humanist worldview about a young mother who seems to feel isolated and unconnected to other people and who gradually goes mad, told with too much ambiguity, no one turns to God or the Bible or clergy for help, and disturbed mother is sent to a psychological facility, but the therapists are humanist, and it’s only a temporary fix, but boyfriend tries to help girlfriend her by proposing marriage, though it’s not clear whether this has any positive effect at all;
At least 40 obscenities (including at least 31 “f” words), six strong profanities using the name Jesus Christ in some way, two GD profanities, two light profanities;
Strong and light, sometimes disturbing, violence such as woman shoots to death an injured dog that won’t stop barking and that seems to be a danger to her baby, woman deliberately thrusts her head into a mirror and makes it bleed, the couple in the movie accidentally hit a deer with their car when they get distracted during an argument, woman falls through a plate glass window at home, woman trashes a bathroom and mindlessly empties bottles onto the bathroom floor;
A scene of depicted adulterous sex, a scene of heavy implied fornication after passionate kissing results in an out-of-wedlock pregnancy (the movie waits until midway or longer to reveal to confirm that the man and woman weren’t yet married – this seemed really bizarre), and a scene of partially depicted female self-abuse;
Full frontal female nudity in one scene, upper female nudity in other scenes, upper and rear male nudity in fornication scene, and upper male nudity in two other scenes;
Some beer drinking;
Brief smoking but no drugs; and,
Boyfriend/husband seems clueless in how to help his mentally disturbed girlfriend/wife (he’s not depicted as a bad guy, but more like a man who’s out of his depth), man’s elderly father is suffering from severe memory problems so there’s a sad scene depicting this.
More Detail:
The movie opens with Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson, played by Robert Pattinson, arriving at the house in rural Montana that Jackson inherited from one of his uncles. The house is sparsely furnished, and the first thing they do is make love on the dining room floor.
Months later, the unmarried couple (the movie doesn’t reveal this fact until midway through the movie) have a newborn son. Grace, a young writer, stays at home tending to the baby while Jackson travels to other cities trying to make a living.
Feeling isolated and depressed, Grace starts to go stir-crazy. She tries walking her son in a baby carriage the long distance to visit her mother-in-law’s house, but it doesn’t help. She acts increasingly erratic and abandons her writing projects .
Eventually, Jackson tries proposing to her and having a nice wedding. However, the question is whether this will help Grace.
Jennifer Lawrence delivers a standout performance in DIE MY LOVE. However, the writing seems to let Lawrence down. For example, the movie fails to give an impression of her character’s psychology BEFORE she becomes pregnant. Also, Lawrence’s character just goes from one crazy act to another, interspersed with periods of boredom. So, viewers are left wondering about this woman, and any strong connection with her gets lost.
Of course, post-partum depression is a serious issue with many mothers. However, the movie is deliberately ambiguous and cagey about the cause or causes of the mother’s mental issues. Despite this, the way the movie is shot implies that the isolation and drudgery of her homelife are two reasons for her depression and mental instability. Sadly, the ending is also ambiguous, so it’s somewhat open-ended. Did the mother commit suicide, or did she just walk away? Who knows?
In addition to all this, the mother becomes attracted to a mysterious, helmeted black man riding a motorcycle around her house. They have an explicit affair, but just as quickly as it begins, it stops. So, once again, viewers are left in the dark.
Some people might mistake all this for brilliant cinema, but MOVIEGUDIE® found it somewhat boring and not very satisfying. So, we think average moviegoers will feel the same about DIE MY LOVE.
That said, MOVIEGUIDE® gives DIE MY LOVE three stars for Jennifer Lawrence’s performance as the mother. The movie also has lots of strong foul language, including more than 30 “f” words and eight strong profanities. It also has multiple scenes with female nudity, including a scene of total female nudity, plus a graphic scene of depicted adultery and a scene of heavily implied fornication. No one turns to God, the Bible or clergy for help. So, DIE MY LOVE seems to have a godless Romantic, humanist worldview. Finally, there are some strange acts of violence, including a forest fire that may or may not have been started by the mentally ill mother. These and other scenes in the movie get a bit repetitious. So, MOVIEGUIDE® rates DIE MY LOVE as unsatisfying, excessive and unacceptable.
