Pam (Sissy Spacek) knows a bad case of the baby blues when she sees it. She realizes that’s what’s going on with new mom Grace (Jennifer Lawrence), an author whose writing is blocked and whose actions and mood swings become more erratic, disruptive, and alarming in filmmaker Lynne Ramsay’s latest gnarly comedy/drama — a dark journey into the mindset of a woman in the throes of postpartum depression.

Pam, soon to become Grace’s mother-in-law, tells her that everybody in her position goes loopy. True. But not even Pam entirely understands the rollercoaster of emotions Grace experiences when she moves with her hard-drinking boyfriend Jackson (Robert Pattinson) and their newborn into a rural home where Jackson’s uncle took his own life.

The rundown house, with flies buzzing around and eventually a yapping puppy that clueless Jackson brings home, opens the door for an already-troubled Grace to enter a purgatory-like world. It might be real, and it might not. Either way, it sets her on a precarious path toward some bizarre behavior, including crawling around like a cat, wielding sharp cutlery, and fantasizing about an alluring neighbor (LaKeith Stanfield) on a motorcycle.

Depicting women on the verge of a nervous breakdown is not a new cinematic motif by any means. But Ramsay, an auteur known for stretching boundaries and jabbing at your nerves with tremendous films such as *We Need to Talk About Kevin*, *You Were Never Here*, and *Morvern Callar*, is fearless and puts her fugue-like stamp on the material for a unique experience.

Literalists will likely detest this, while those willing to surrender to Ramsay’s dark, moody, and open-for-interpretation vision will embrace it.

As the sexually charged Grace — a woman burning with desire and a primordial need to slip the handcuffs that cultural norms for new moms have clamped on her — Lawrence is mercurial and magnetic. Ramsay demands a lot from the Oscar winner, and Lawrence is up to the challenge. She is panther-like, vulnerable, and furious.

Her fiery performance gets support from Pattinson as her doting but out-of-his-league lover, and Spacek as a woman from another generation who has weathered tradition and sees glimmers of herself in Grace. Stanfield, in a smaller, more symbolic role, smolders while Nick Nolte, as Jackson’s ailing father, has a particularly moving scene with Lawrence.

Various factors combine to make that happen: the intense performances, the surrealistic cinematography (Seamus McGarvey’s work deserves special recogn
https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/11/04/review-jennifer-lawrence-die-my-love/