Considering she’s only directed four features in the last quarter-century, any new film from Lynne Ramsay comes with quite the anticipation. Following 2017’s You Were Never Really Here, the director has circled no fewer than five potential projects. Now, one finally seems to be moving forward as a summer production has been confirmed in Canada.
An adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s 2019 novel Die, My Love, which follows a mother who struggles to maintain her sanity as she battles with psychosis in a remote rural area, is eying a shoot in Alberta, Canada from August through October, as confirmed by Calgary Herald and the Director’s Guild of Canada. Thus far, only Jennifer Lawrence is attached to lead the project but expect more casting news soon. Die, My Love will mark Lawrence’s first project since last year’s summer comedy No Hard Feelings.
“It’s about mental health and the breakdown of a marriage,” said Ramsay last year. “But it’s really fucking funny. At least I think it’s funny… But I’m Glaswegian, so I’ve [got] a really black sense of humor.” Check out the book synopsis below, which brings up comparisons to the work of John Cassavetes, David Lynch, Lars von Trier, and John Ford.
In a forgotten patch of French countryside, a woman is battling her demons – embracing exclusion yet wanting to belong, craving freedom whilst feeling trapped, yearning for family life but at the same time wanting to burn the entire house down. Given surprising leeway by her family for her increasingly erratic behaviour, she nevertheless feels ever more stifled and repressed. Motherhood, womanhood, the banality of love, the terrors of desire, the inexplicable brutality of ‘another person carrying your heart forever’ – Die, My Love faces all this with a raw intensity. It’s not a question of if a breaking point will be reached, but rather when and how violent a form will it take?
This is a brutal, wild book – it’s impossible to come out from reading Ariana Harwicz unscathed. The language of Die, My Love cuts like a scalpel even as it attains a kind of cinematic splendour, evoking the likes of John Cassavetes, David Lynch, Lars von Trier and John Ford. In a text that explores the destabilising effects of passion and its absence, immersed in the psyche of a female protagonist always on the verge of madness, in the tradition of Sylvia Plath and Clarice Lispector, Harwicz moulds language, submitting it to her will in irreverent prose. Bruising and confrontational, yet anchored in an unapologetic beauty and lyricism, Die, My Love is a unique reading experience that quickly becomes addictive.
