Nowadays, when I hear about “the new Jennifer Lawrence film”, I don’t feel hopeful. The bright young actress who charmed everybody in movies such as The Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and American Hustle (2013), has been a long time without a decent role. There have been appearances in franchise features such as X-Men, and The Hunger Games, and a bizarre outing in Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! (2017).
While Joy (2015), was slight but acceptable, that couldn’t be said about some of her other choices. Red Sparrow (2018) was an awful dud, and No Hard Feelings (2023) a deadset career killer. Both movies featured shamelessly exploitative sequences in which Lawrence had to bare all for the camera. I’m not exactly prudish, but it was hard to escape the feeling that these glimpses of celebrity flesh were intended to attract audiences that might otherwise not be interested.
Lawrence is getting her gear off again in Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, although there is a more credible dramatic reason, as she is playing a young mother going crazy in the backblocks of Montana. It’s axiomatic that crazy people walk around naked, or spend hours creeping through the grass on all fours… isn’t it?
In this film, Lawrence spends so long slinking around on her hands and knees, bum in the air, it feels unsettling when she walks on her hind legs. Then again, almost everything she does in this film is unsettling, whether she’s fondling a big knife or pushing the baby in its pram down a lonely road.