When I was a child learning about the various wars and conflicts that have raged throughout history, I used to be secretly grateful that I was a girl. After all, history lessons and cosy period dramas alike would have us all believe that the men were tasked with bravely facing the brutality of battle, while women remained at home, safe, comfortable, and protected. But this is hardly an accurate portrayal, is it? For one thing, that gender binary is rather outdated. But there’s also the fact that, for women, the home has never been without its own battles. Though it may have fewer bayonets, domestic life can be a bloody, brutal business. And few battles are harder than that of motherhood.
This year, filmmakers seem to be catching up and, finally, taking an interest. A new crop of female-led films are reframing the female domestic space, untangling it from its sanitised, comfy associations, and instead, presenting it as it truly is: a battleground of its own. Lynne Ramsey’s new film Die, My Love sees Jennifer Lawrence taking on the role of a mother descending into a terrifying case of postpartum psychosis. In Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, Jessie Buckley gives a heart-wrenching performance as Agnes, William Shakespeare’s wife, who undergoes the horrific trauma of losing a child. Finally, Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You stars Rose Byrne as a mother on the brink as she faces impossible pressure from every angle.
©MUBI Credit SeamusMcGarvey
Ramsey’s Die, My Love, which lands in cinemas this Friday, is a bold, brash, defiant film. Here, motherhood is not a quiet, cooing, coddled thing, but an unapologetic explosion of colour across the screen. And it can get ugly. Lawrence, in a raw, muscular performance, plays Grace, a writer and new mother, living with her husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson) in a rambling country home.
From her first moments on screen, Grace defies the socially acceptable image of what a mother should be. She’s sexual, raw, a little wild. In one opening shot, we see her prowling through the tall grass outside their home, watching her baby and husband like a cat hunting its prey.
Their picturesque early parenthood soon descends into something akin to a horror film. Grace, often left alone with her child, begins to slip into postpartum psychosis. She imagines, hallucinates and unravels as her old self, and all sense of reality slips away. And we come along for the terrifying ride with her, unsure if anything we’re seeing is real. In “Die, My Love,” motherhood is not only lonely but also perilous.