Parents' Guide to Die My Love

Director Lynne Ramsay has created an exceptional work of art in this drama, painting a female experience that's provocative, affecting, gorgeous, stunning, and utterly unique. Consistent with her other works of bleak visual poetry, images and audio are elevated over dialogue and explanation. And, like distracted visitors to an art gallery, that means many viewers may give it a glance and walk off mumbling, "Weird ... I don't get it." That group is likely to include teens—because Die My Love is a mother's story, if ever there was one. (Pattinson's Jackson is failing Grace in some ways, but it's evident that he loves her and is struggling to resolve her issues, and partners who've been in his shoes may identify with his feeling of helplessness.)

Grace is a wild thing, a young New York author so dazzled by bait of her handsome drummer boyfriend/husband that she doesn't notice that she has wandered straight into a snare. The young lovers move into Jackson's family home in the middle of nowhere, and their fiery passion yields the inevitable: a baby. Grace adores her child and fuels their little world with her restless imagination, but with no regular adult companionship, she's bored. And perhaps losing her mind. Is she suffering from postpartum depression? Or is her brain taking the necessary action to keep her sane while looking quite insane to others? Grace acts out fantasies that many mothers might secretly entertain: smashing through a plate of glass to get attention, destroying a room to show frustration, or stripping down and jumping into a pool to escape dull party conversation. Lawrence's powerful performance suggests that Grace is making a deliberate choice—a statement of defiance. Will this trapped creature gnaw off her own leg to escape, or surrender her identity until her true self withers away? The ending (is it real? is it a metaphor?) is a shocker, the kind that chews at the edges of your soul long after the credits roll.