Latest news with #LynneRamsay
CairoScene
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Review: Die My Love, A Fever Dream Called Motherhood
Review: Die My Love, A Fever Dream Called Motherhood Jennifer Lawrence is absolutely electrifying in Lynne Ramsay's 'Die My Love'. This is without doubt her greatest performance yet. She plays a woman driven to the brink of insanity by marriage and motherhood. Her performance is raw, primal, and slightly unhinged. Lawrence doesn't so much portray despair as embody it. Her physicality is animalistic. Here's a character study of a woman at war with herself and the expectations placed upon her. I was floored by the untamed intensity of it all. It certainly helps that you have an auteur like Lynne Ramsay behind the camera. Ramsay is a filmmaker with an unmatched eye for visual poetry. Her work on Ratcatcher remains one of the most visually original debuts I've ever seen. Here, too, she channels that same intuitive brilliance. She crafts images that feel both dreamlike and deeply visceral. This is a fever dream of a film. It sways between moods like hormonal tides raging inside the main character. One moment, she's having wild, urgent sex with her husband (Robert Pattinson). Next she's dancing with reckless abandon, as if trying to shake off the weight of her own mind. These shifts aren't just mood swings. They're seismic emotional explosions. The film immerses us in this internal storm. It's one of the few films I've seen that understands how terrifying and ecstatic it can be to feel too much. The film drifts back and forth in time. We see fragments of before and after birth. Aunts offering unsolicited advice, wives' tales passed down like warnings, strangers talking at her baby with the entitlement of familiarity. The sudden drop in sexual intimacy. The awkward silence that follows. And then, the fierce, almost violent return of it. It's not a story about motherhood as much as it is an experience of it. Not what it is, but what it feels like. And what it feels like, here, is everything at once. 'Die My Love' feels like a spiritual cousin to last year's Nightbitch. Both films articulate the unspeakable toll of motherhood. In both, the domestic household becomes a psychological battleground. The real terror isn't monsters or killers, but the slow erasure of the self. Ramsay's film is more lyrical, more impressionistic, but no less disturbing. I must also give praise to Nick Nolte as her father-in-law. Nolte delivers one of the most quietly powerful performances of his career. I feel Nolte has entered a remarkable phase in his late age. His voice, now weathered by time, crackles with a gravelly grace that says more than words ever could. With 'Die My Love', Ramsay doesn't frame postpartum depression with tidy explanations. Instead, she lets us feel the weight of its disorientation. She finds a way to visually express the numbing dissociation. The flickers of sorrow that creep in unannounced. The film perfectly captures the grief of losing a part of yourself in the process of becoming someone else. It understands that depression after birth isn't just sadness. It's estrangement from your body, your partner, your child, your sense of self. 'Die My Love' honours the truth of that experience. What she and Lawrence achieve here is nothing short of extraordinary.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
13 Hot Sales Titles Premiering at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival
Buyers are finally wise to the fact that Cannes is driving the Oscar race and even the specialized box office. Everyone wants to find the next 'Anora,' 'The Substance,' 'Emilia Perez,' or 'Anatomy of a Fall.' And more buyers like MUBI, Metrograph, Sideshow, and other upstarts have emerged to take on the likes of Neon and A24, who come to Cannes armed with several titles already set to debut. Below, we've identified 13 movies looking for homes that could be the next awards breakout, including new films from Lynne Ramsay and Richard Linklater and the debuts of Kristen Stewart and Harris Dickinson. More from IndieWire 'Left-Handed Girl' Review: Sean Baker Edits and Co-Writes 'Tangerine' Producer Shih-Ching Tsou's Kaleidoscopic Solo Directing Debut Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck to Adapt Upcoming Taylor Jenkins Reid Novel for Laika's Live-Action Division All titles presented alphabetically. 'The Chronology of Water' (Un Certain Regard)Director: Kristen StewartStars: Imogen Poots, Thora Birch, Jim Belushi, Tom SturridgeBuzz: Even if it's in a sidebar for a first-time director, Kristen Stewart's debut should be a hot ticket with a lot of interested buyers after news of her desire to write and direct an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir broke way back in 2018 and only finally got cameras rolling last year. 'Die, My Love' (Competition)Director: Lynne RamsayStars: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, Sissy Spacek, LaKeith StanfieldBuzz: The first film from the 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' director in eight years was a late addition to the festival competition and is described as a portrait of a woman engulfed by love and madness and caught in a haze between her husband and her lover, all set in rural America. 'Enzo' (Director's Fortnight)Director: Laurent Cantet and Robin CampilloStars: Pierfrancesco Favino, Élodie Bouchez, Malou KhebiziBuzz: The opening night film of the Director's Fortnight sidebar is a posthumous entry from 'The Class' director Laurent Cantet, who died in April. 'BPM' filmmaker Robin Campillo finished the project, which is a coming-of-age story of a teen who takes up a masonry apprentice to break free from a bourgeois upbringing. 'Exit 8' (Midnight)Director: Genki KawamuraStars: Kazunari NinomiyaBuzz: Would you expect that Cannes would premiere a film based on a video game? This film is an adaptation of a buzzy indie game available on Steam about a man trapped in an endless stretch of seemingly identical subway tunnels and needing to pay careful attention to find his way out. 'It Was Just an Accident' (Competition)Director: Jafar PanahiStars: Madjid PanahiBuzz: The latest film from the Iranian master behind 'Taxi' and 'This Is Not a Film' is back at Cannes for the first time since 2021 and in competition for the first time since '3 Faces' in 2018 won Best Screenplay. 'It Was Just an Accident' pairs him with the production company behind 'Anatomy of a Fall.' 'Lucky Lu' (Director's Fortnight)Director: Lloyd Lee ChoiStars: Chang Chen, Fala Chen, Carabelle MannaBuzz: Destin Daniel Cretton produces this film that's an expansion of a 2022 short called 'Same Old' that competed for the Palme D'Or for Best Short Film and marks director Choi's feature debut. 'Nouvelle Vague' (Competition)Director: Richard LinklaterStars: Zoey Deutch, Guillaume Marbeck, Aubry DullinBuzz: Filming in black and white in the vintage French New Wave style, 'Nouvelle Vague' is the story of the birth of the French film movement and the making of Jean-Luc Godard's masterpiece 'Breathless,' one Linklater told IndieWire reminded him of the experience of making his own first film. 'Peak Everything' (Director's Fortnight)Director: Anne ÉmondStars: Patrick Hivon, Piper PeraboBuzz: This romantic drama hails from the director of 'Young Juliet' and the producer of last year's winner in this very sidebar of Director's Fortnight, the Canadian film 'Universal Language.' 'The Plague' (Un Certain Regard)Director: Charlie PolingerStars: Joel EdgertonBuzz: Charlie Polinger, described as a wunderkind of fringe theater, is only making his directorial debut with 'The Plague,' a psychological thriller anchored by a trio of young newcomer actors at a summer camp, but he's a hot rising name who is already next making an A24 movie starring Sydney Sweeney. The film is said to be visually impressive, have great young performances, and is an analysis of the meltdown a 14-year-old can go through while going through puberty. 'The Secret Agent' (Competition)Director: Kleber Mendonca FilhoStars: Wagner Moura, Udo Kier, Gabriel LeoneBuzz: A period political thriller from the Brazilian director of cult film 'Bacarau,' which won the Cannes Jury Prize in 2019, this one stars 'Civil War' and 'Narcos' breakout Wagner Moura in a film that should have some domestic legs. 'The Wave' (Cannes Premiere)Director: Sebastian LelioStars: Daniela López, Avril Aurora, Lola Bravo, Paulina CortésBuzz: Before he takes on the Carl Sagan biopic 'The Voyagers,' the director of 'A Fantastic Woman' has a #MeToo protest musical about a woman who becomes an unexpected central figure in a feminist movement. See some first look images here. 'The Young Mother's Home' (Competition)Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc DardenneStars: Elsa Houben, Lucie Laruelle, Janaina HalloyBuzz: The Belgian brothers didn't get an award from the Cannes jury with their last competition film 'Tori and Lokita' from 2022, but their social-realist dramas almost always find award recognition and a theatrical home. 'Urchin' (Un Certain Regard)Director: Harris DickinsonStars: Frank Dillane, Megan Northam, Amr Waked, Karyna Khymchuk, Shonagh MarieBuzz: The directorial debut of 'Babygirl' and 'Triangle of Sadness' star (and future John Lennon) Harris Dickinson, Dickinson wrote 'Urchin' himself about a homeless man in London struggling to break free from an ongoing cycle of self-destruction. Dillane is already getting some high marks for his authentic portrayal of a homeless drifter and addict from those who have seen it in rough cuts. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Die My Love' Review: Jennifer Lawrence Goes Full Feral in Lynne Ramsay's Intense, Exhausting Postpartum Psychosexual Frenzy
You haven't lived until you've seen Jennifer Lawrence doing any of the debasing things she does in Lynne Ramsay's 'Die My Love,' like crawling on all fours through a field of grass, a kitchen knife in hand as she closes in on her character Grace's newborn baby, or masturbating gloomily in a state of postpartum doom while her husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson) finishes cooking dinner downstairs, a self-induced orgasm timed to the spring of a toaster below. Grace is just trying to be a good wife, a good mother, but she's failing spectacularly at it in Ramsay's alternately absorbing, exhausting tone poem of post-birth grief turned into psychosexual frenzy. Lawrence — whose fearless skill in conjuring women gone perilously over the verge and unhinged from top to toe while trying to play house was already established in Darren Aronofsky's 'mother!' — gives the kind of unleashed performance film festival Best Actress prizes are made for in the 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' filmmaker's latest. More from IndieWire Darren Aronofsky Partners with Google DeepMind on Generative AI Short Film Initiative Google Unveils Gen-AI Video Tool with Camera Controls, Consistent Character Design, and Even Sound Co-written with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch from a novel by Ariana Harwicz, 'Die My Love' is a two-hour cinematic miasma of what it's like to be in postpartum depression hell and possessed by a sexual appetite that could never possibly be quenched by even someone as hot as Robert Pattinson. As such, it will be a tough sell for even Lawrence's most ardent fans. The story offers little to hook us onto other than Grace's constant flailing through psychosis, visually realized by cinematographer Seamus McGarvey with the feeling of a bad dream you wake up from in a heated, unforgiving sweat. The atmosphere of this fugue-state-turned-panic-attack of a film is never not intoxicating. As Grace spins out in a hothouse countryside beset by ever-buzzing flies — inescapable swelter and tall grass abound — you can all but feel the ticks and Lyme disease consuming you. These are all testaments to what a visceral, unusually subjective filmmaker Ramsay is. In 'We Need to Talk About Kevin,' she straps us into the fracturing mind of a mother whose sociopathic son has just shot up his school, turning her community against her. 'Die My Love' presents us with a very different kind of mother, one not easily liked or pleasantly watchable and one less sympathetic than Tilda Swinton's in 'Kevin.' The occasionally implausible human behavior on display here feels closer to 'Morvern Callar' in soul and tone. In that Ramsay film, Samantha Morton stole her dead boyfriend's manuscripts to pose as the writer she could never be, leaving his body to decay into rigor mortis in their apartment. Grace is also a writer, though she's watched that dream curdle and die (and at her own discontented devising) along with seemingly her personhood amid the birth of a cute baby boy and a simultaneous move with Jackson into his dead uncle's neglected-looking country house. 'Die My Love' begins with images of a forest fire (which this grueling, difficult, but often beautiful film will return to) that give way to a punk-rock montage of Grace and Jackson fucking furiously, spliced and diced manically by editor Toni Froschhammer. Grace has a nonstop sexual hunger that does not conform comfortably to the demands of motherhood; demands where, for her, nymphomania-adjacent tendencies interfere with baby monitors and breast-feeding. Lawrence often has this frisky, rabid grin that's irresistible to watch but also scary. 'A real mom would have baked a cake,' Grace says, as she serves what is basically a melted soup of sugar to Jackson and their child on what appears to be one of their good days. Much later, and after events I won't spoil, she will serve up a cake frosted with the words 'Mommy's Home' that crystallize just how much this woman is not the most skillful of bakers. Or homemakers. Or the kind of woman who could ever be either of those, one that any man or any life or any world expects her to be. I don't think there has ever before been such a psychologically immersive view of postpartum depression as 'Die My Love' onscreen. The film careens between a dreary sludge of despair and eventual heart-palpitating nightmare, Grace caught in a mercurial storm of her own moods without ballast and unable to be understood by those around her. Especially not Jackson's parents, Pam (Sissy Spacek, whose character's own past background reveals stark parallels to Grace's current one) and Harry (Nick Nolte, rattled by dementia and also plopped into this movie pointlessly). Meanwhile, a motorcycle-riding neighbor played by LaKeith Stanfield encircles the grounds, seeming to offer more promising ways to meet Grace's sexual rigors now that Jackson can't seem to match up to his wife's pathological horniness. Hello, amorous, foreboding stranger, as Grace chases after a mystery man in a helmet she doesn't know. In movie terms, he turns out to be a red herring, or at least not a character Ramsay and Walsh are interested in building out. Then again, none of the extracurricular ensemble gets much of a chance to shine or become real people. Other than Spacek's Pam, who eventually gets a brief moment to relate to Grace's plight as they toast to the mutual oblivions they've created as unfit mothers. 'Die My Love' isn't without a sly sense of humor, which elevates this film above other similar movies that induce their audience into as deep an emotional coma as their protagonist. Lawrence delivers some sharply barbing, quotable, I-must-write-this-down one-liners, like when she's shopping, in another of her displaced fogs, at a gas station market, and a perky cashier asks her, 'Find everything you were looking for?' 'In life?' Grace replies, before ripping into this perfectly nice woman. How funny Grace would've been as a character without Lawrence at the helm, who knows? The 'Silver Linings Playbook' actress — who perfectly straddles the line between perversion and pathos just by her natural appearance, here with bangs and freaked-out eyes — at one point stands over a blank piece of paper, dead-eyed, pondering her former life as a would-have-been writer, while mixing her own breastmilk with ink. Like 'We Need to Talk About Kevin,' 'Die My Love' is both a caution against the unexpected perils of motherhood and also an embrace of their incumbent ills as a necessary part of the job. Ramsay's filmmaking is undeniably powerful, engulfing us in the sick stew of Grace's mind while flooding the soundtrack with music from Lou Reed, David Bowie, and the Cocteau Twins (Ramsay has always been an apt picker of songs that tell the psychic story of her films' protagonists). But there's a lot of time spent on Grace wandering about the proverbial emotional cabin — and also this literal one she lives in with Jackson. Blood pours off her face a lot of the time from various self-inflicted wounds. There's a motif about a horse that's hard to make sense of other than the obvious: freedom lives everywhere else except in this woman's life. You almost wish Grace would lose it just a little bit more in the movie's first hour; you crave the 'mother!'-level breakdowns of a woman, finally, screaming, 'Get out of my fucking house!' Until the later stretches, where Grace and Jackson finally achieve an entente that leaves her, the bloodied woman with a baby carriage in the street and tears in her eyes, forced to face up to the family she's putting into ruin. 'Die My Love' can be languorous in its vision of a person coming undone, but Lawrence is game and fearless, stripping herself in all senses to lean into a woman's debilitating emotional crisis. Her sexual freefall is among the more compelling in recent cinematic memory despite its purposeful blinders with regards to other, less compelling characters. At one point Grace calls Jackson a 'useless fucking faggot' when he can't get it up for a forced moment of hasty sex in the front seat of their car. Lawrence is gorgeous, but in this state? No, thank you, to this mentally ill request for lovemaking. As undeveloped as Pattinson's Jackson is, you want to hand it to him while also wanting to slap that very hand across his face: Wake up, dude. But there's something strangely romantic about this pairing, which Ramsay drills home in the final coda. They need each other, and maybe all Grace had to know was confirmation of Jackson's own need, too. Seeing 'Die My Love' at Cannes, European critics will be unfazed by Lawrence's unvarnished and very naked turn, though in the U.S., she will be commended for her 'bravery.' If enough people see it at all to make such an appraisal. Her performance will shock the baser public. What Lawrence achieves here is extremely impressive, a marquee movie star throwing herself with abandon into a filmmaker's warped and demandingly miserable vision. A last visual metaphor, however strained, forces us (and Jackson) to finally see Grace for who she is: a woman beyond the pale, beyond reproach, beyond help. Lawrence is committed to the insanity. She's never been better, and she needs no help getting to where this film takes her. Lynne Ramsay, wind her up and watch her go. 'Die My Love' premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution. Want to stay up to date on IndieWire's film and critical thoughts? to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers. 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BBC News
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Sirat to Eddington and Sentimental Value: The 12 Cannes films you need to know about
This year's Cannes Film Festival finishes today – and from the hundreds of titles that premiered, here are the ones which are going to be big talking points all through 2025. 1. Die, My Love With the combined star power of Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson and the arthouse credentials of acclaimed Scottish film-maker Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk about Kevin), Die, My Love was one of the most eagerly anticipated titles going into Cannes, where it sold to Mubi for $24m (£17.8m). Adapted from a 2017 novel by Ariana Harwicz, it sees Lawrence and Pattinson play a loved-up couple whose relationship unravels after a move to the countryside and the birth of their baby, and centres on the psychotic breakdown of Lawrence's character. At a festival event, Ramsay criticised journalists' read of the film as purely about postpartum psychosis, however, saying it was instead "about a relationship breaking down, it's about love breaking down, and sex breaking down after having a baby. And it's also about a creative block". Critics praised the cast in particular, which includes Sissy Spacek, LaKeith Stanfield and Nick Nolte – but the film belongs to Lawrence's raw, sensual-but-humorous performance. "What Lawrence does in Die, My Love is so delicately textured, even within its bold expressiveness, and its fiery anger, that it leaves you scrambling for adjectives," writes Stephanie Zacharek in Time, while the BBC's Nicholas Barber calls her "better than ever". (RL) 2. Sound of Falling Even by Cannes' standards, Sound of Falling is an extraordinarily ambitious, richly textured and beautiful work of art. Mascha Schilinski's second feature film is all set in and around the same farmhouse in Germany, but it slips between four different time periods. We see the same characters as young children and as old people; we hear the traumas that echo through the generations. It can be challenging to figure out how everyone is connected to everyone else, and in some ways Sound of Falling is more reminiscent of a novel than a typical film. But Schilinski conjures up haunting, immersive effects that are only possible on the big screen. "Cinema is too small a word for what this sprawling yet intimate epic achieves in its ethereal, unnerving brilliance," said Damon Wise in Deadline. Forget Cannes, forget the Competition, forget the whole year, even – Sound of Falling is an all-timer." (NB) 3. Pillion Arguably, no film had a more striking premise this year than this British feature playing in the Un Certain Regard sidebar: a gay BDSM romance, featuring Hollywood star Alexander Skarsgård as Ray, a "dom", leather-clad biker living in the London suburbs who finds a "sub" in the form of adorkable car park inspector Colin, played by Harry Potter star Harry Melling. But the film itself was no mere provocation, instead providing a sharply observed and creditably knotty inquiry into such a relationship. Initially, as the inexperienced, nerdy Colin is thrust into a whole new world of sexual transgression, the film seems to occupy classic Brit-com territory in its quirky, farcical tone, despite the boundary-pushing subject matter. But it also darkens as it goes on, leaving the audience to reflect on whether such degrading role-play is plain emotional abuse; events reach a climax with an electric, excruciating lunch scene, in which Colin's mother (a brilliant Lesley Sharp) confronts Ray about his treatment of her son. Some reviewers such as David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter found it "unexpectedly sweet" though for me, it was far more troubling than that – a sign, perhaps, of the kind of divided opinions that it may inspire when it is unleashed on the general public. (HM) 4. Eddington A wild and chaotic comedy thriller from Ari Aster, the director of Hereditary and Midsommar, Eddington stars Joaquin Phoenix as a bungling small-town sheriff who imagines himself to be the straight-talking hero of his story, but might just be its devious and detestable villain. The setting is New Mexico in 2020. Aster pokes despairing fun at the ways Americans reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the other events that defined that strange year, making this one of the only major US films to grapple with so many divisive contemporary political issues. Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler co-star in what Sophie Monks Kaufman of the Independent called "Aster's funniest film to date". The "well-observed" Eddington "has a sweep that shows that the Wild West still exists on the ground and online," she writes, "and a keen eye for the people that grow in a sandy, mountain-flanked, lonely landscape". (NB) 5. The Secret Agent Kleber Mendonça Filho's 1977 Brazil-set thriller about a man on the run is one of the favourites to scoop Cannes' top honour, the Palme d'Or. Looking ahead, it looks likely to follow in the footsteps of I'm Still Here, another film set under the Brazilian dictatorship of the 1970s, which won the Oscar for best international film at the 2025 Academy Awards. At two hours and 40 minutes, The Secret Agent takes its sweet time to unravel, before an exhilarating and bloody final chase and a poignant coda that echoes I'm Still Here in its reflection on the legacy of this turbulent period in Brazil's history. The sympathetic protagonist, Marcelo, is played by Wagner Moura, in a charismatic performance that is tipped for acting nods come awards season. In his five-star review, The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw writes: "The Secret Agent doesn't have the imperatives of a conventional thriller and expecting these will cause impatience. It's more novelistic in its way: a movie of character, a showcase for Moura's complex, sympathetic performance but also the platform for some thrilling, bravura film-making." (RL) 6. Sentimental Value Joaquin Trier's The Worst Person in the World was a smash at Cannes in 2021, and went on to be nominated for two Oscars. Now the Norwegian director is back with another insightful comedy drama set in Oslo, with the same luminous star, Renate Reinsve. In Sentimental Value, she plays a famous theatre and television actress. Her obnoxiously self-centred father, played by Stellan Skarsgard, is a heavyweight film director, but he hasn't been able to raise money for a new project in 15 years. Could that be why he has written a screenplay especially for his celebrated daughter? Or could the proposed film be a sincere effort to fix the problems between them? "On its surface, the film may touch on the familiar theme of how artists draw from their own lives," said Tim Grierson in Screen International, "but Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgard bring incredible tenderness to a story that is ultimately about what children and parents never say to one another." (NB) 7. Sirat For all the projects with big name talent involved, one of the real joys of Cannes is when films that came into the festival as relatively unknown quantities finish it as major talking points, thanks to their sheer bold, bonkers brilliance. Such has been the case this year with Sirat, Spanish director Oliver Laxe's first film in the main competition, which has left people equal parts enraptured and stressed, even as they have struggled to explain what it's all about. But here goes: beginning at a Moroccan desert rave, whose increasing sketchiness sets the skew-whiff tone, it focuses on a father looking for his missing daughter. As military forces come to break up the gathering, an apocalyptic element is introduced to the story, before the story morphs into a touching road movie, as the father and his young son join a merry band of hedonists driving through the mountains on their way to another event. But then a series of shocking twists change everything, turning this into an existential drama, with blackly comic edges, that is part Mad Max, part Samuel Beckett – or as Jessica Kiang in Variety called it, a "brilliantly bizarre, cult-ready vision of human psychology tested to its limits". With its earth-shattering techno-flavoured sound design and awe-inspiring cinematography of the arid North African landscape, this is also, it should be noted, the most ravishingly epic of this year's entrants – and that combined with its shock factor could well make it a watercooler film beyond the festival circuit. (HM) 8. The Chronology of Water Ever since shooting straight to the top of the A-list with Twilight, Kristen Stewart has made intelligent, challenging choices with her career, largely eschewing blockbusters for daring, imaginative arthouse projects. So it's no surprise really that her first film behind the camera should have proved to be such a deeply-felt work, in its exploration of womanhood and trauma, marking her out as a film-maker of real vision. Based on a memoir by writer Lidia Yuknavitch – played by a blazing, no-holds-barred Imogen Poots – it tells a powerful story of her struggle to process her pain through art, taking in her abusive childhood, battles with drugs and a heartrending stillbirth among other things. Except, as signalled by the title, nothing is in traditional narrative order: rather Stewart attempts to immerse us in Yuknavitch's consciousness via a fragmentary collage of images and life moments. As David Fear in Rolling Stone says, the result is "radical, bruising, and aggressive in its honesty" – even if sometimes, you wish Stewart would allow for some more conventional scenes to play out, to better appreciate the strong supporting performances in particular, including Thora Birch as Yuknavitc's grounding sister and Jim Belushi as her mentor, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author Ken Kesey. But its more impressionistic power means it's the kind of film that lingers with, and haunts you, well after the credits have rolled – and, for that reason, as well as its director's popularity, it could well pick up a devoted fanbase. (HM) 9. Urchin One theme at this year's festival was well-received films made by actors who were trying their hand at being writer-directors. Alongside Scarlett Johansson and Kristen Stewart, Harris Dickinson (Babygirl) made his behind-the-camera debut with Urchin, a sharp, slyly comic drama about a middle-class young man (Frank Dillane) who has been a homeless drug addict for years. It's a daring film, in that it doesn't try to make its protagonist likeable, nor does it explain how someone from a well-off background ended up on the streets. Dickinson is typically impressive when he turns up in a few scenes himself, but Urchin suggests that he could do as much directing as acting from now on. His previous roles "appear to have functioned as an informal film school", says David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter, "equipping him to tackle a much-trafficked subject in ways that are thoughtful, distinctive and clearly culled from close study of a highly specific world." (NB) 10. My Father's Shadow Cannes may certainly be the premier platform for world cinema as a whole, but not every part of the globe is equally represented – and it certainly comes as a shock that this year's edition is the first ever to play host to a Nigerian film in its official selection. Certainly, though, after the impact My Father's Shadow made on the Croisette, you'd hope to see plenty more Nigerian entries following in its footsteps in coming years: Akinola Davies Jr's debut feature was received with universal warmth, offering a beautiful, poignant depiction of childhood memory, set against a crux point in the country's history in the early '90s. The focus is on two young boys, who are taken by their frequently absent but beloved father Folarin (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) on a trip into the Nigerian capital Lagos – on the very same day that the country's first democratic elections in 10 years are set to anoint a president. What follows is a vibrant, richly-textured and finally powerfully melancholic portrait of a parent and child snatching precious time together amid a society on the edge. As The Telegraph's Tim Robey said in his five star review: "The film is magically nimble, encompassing so much life so pithily in a day. It dreams of a future – for country and family – and mourns the theft of what might have been." (HM) 11. Nouvelle Vague Richard Linklater's tribute to auteur Jean-Luc Godard is a peek-behind-the-scenes of the making of Godard's classic 1960 crime caper Breathless (À bout de souffle). A love letter to French cinema, the Cahiers du Cinéma writers group and the revolutionary 1960s "new wave", Linklater's film could have been tailor-made for the Cannes Film Festival – it even features a few Cannes in-jokes that provoked indulgent smirks in screenings. Linklater's film is a light confection, but an expertly executed one – from its uncanny casting (Guillaume Marbeck as Godard, Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg are all perfect) to its propulsive, jazzy score. "A labour of love and a product of considerable craft…" writes Ben Croll in The Wrap, "[Nouvelle Vague is] more than just a valentine to the French New Wave; the film is also a stealth showcase for a film-maker rarely heralded (or for that matter, tribuned) for his technical sophistication." (RL) 12. It Was Just an Accident Never mind Tom Cruise. As far as cinephiles were concerned, one of the Cannes' biggest events was the presence of Jafar Panahi. In the past, Iran's regime has banned the beloved director from making films and from travelling, so it was a cause for celebration that he was able to come to the festival – and to bring an excellent new film with him. It Was Just an Accident is a farcical revenge thriller about a group of ordinary citizens who think they have found the interrogator who tortured them when they were in prison, but who can't be certain that they've got the right man. The film is fuelled by rage at the brutality of Iran's dictatorship, but is miraculously humane and funny, too. Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian said, "It's another very impressive serio-comic film from one of the most distinctive and courageous figures in world cinema." (NB) -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Los Angeles Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Lynne Ramsay makes movies like no one else. She promises it won't be 8 years before the next one
CANNES, France — You see and hear the films of Scottish-born Lynne Ramsay long after you first take them in. They have a way of burning into your brain. Sometimes it's a question of immersive soundscapes or settings, as with her brutal 1999 debut 'Ratcatcher' or the euphoric post-boyfriend girls' trip 'Morvern Callar.' Elsewhere Ramsay makes violence grippingly personal, as with 2011's 'We Need to Talk About Kevin,' about the dissociating mother of a school shooter, or 2017's 'You Were Never Really Here,' a coiled revenge tale spurred by a kidnapping. It's good that we remember these movies so well because Ramsay's output has never been steady. She's had some bad luck with turnarounds and fickle producers (notoriously on the projects 'The Lovely Bones' and 'Jane Got a Gun,' which swallowed up years). But today, sitting in the sunlight garden of a quiet Cannes hotel blocks from the action, Ramsay smokes and sips coffee contentedly. Her latest movie, 'Die, My Love,' a marital psychodrama starring an impressively unhinged Jennifer Lawrence, has just hours earlier been acquired by Mubi, the upstart distributor that released last year's 'The Substance,' in a deal reported at $24 million. It's a cheering turn of events for a filmmaker who inspires devotion not only from critics and A-listers such as Tilda Swinton and Joaquin Phoenix, but from a generation of young filmmakers who see in her work a defiant, punkish way forward, especially for women in artistic control. We spoke to the 55-year-old Ramsay about her process and making 'Die, My Love.' I was very happy to hear you had a film at Cannes. It's such a rare thing. Hopefully less rare now. So let me ask you directly about that and I hope you take this in the right spirit: Do you wish you'd made more films by now? Oh, yeah. There was one I was just about to shoot called 'Stone Mattress,' based on Margaret Atwood's novel, a little short story in a novella. We were just about to do that. But the producers were pushing for Iceland as a location — it's meant to be in the Arctic. I wanted Greenland. It just felt like we were cutting the lines down. The actor, Julianne Moore, would do a couple of lines in one location, fly four hours and do the rest of the scene. And I just don't work like that. I can't do it all broken up in pieces and it's not good for the actors either. So I was like, I don't think this is the right thing. And then I was like, maybe I should have just done it. But I've written a lot. I've got three scripts, one that's totally ready, one that's almost ready and then another that's in development. I think people really want to know from your point of view: Are you just uncompromising or especially picky? I don't know. I was speaking to my friend Jonathan Glazer about that. Everyone says to him, 'Why don't you make many films?' It was basically 10 years between 'Under the Skin' and 'The Zone of Interest.' He's going to disappear now for another 10 years. I don't know if he will. We were both were talking, like, We're not getting any younger. We've got to hurry up. [Laughs] But yeah, no, it's not by design. It's just life takes over. I have a daughter, there was COVID, stuff nearly gets there and falls through. It's just a tough industry. I am picky in the sense that if you're going to stick with a project for two or three years, then you want to know that you're doing the right one. You don't want to be down the line with it and think, God, I wish I hadn't started this. Meanwhile, it must be exciting when a star like Jennifer Lawrence reaches out to you about a film you made 25 years ago, as she did about 'Ratcatcher.' Well, it was funny. She said she wanted to work with me. That was nice. She was talking about this particular book ['Die My Love,' by Ariana Harwicz] and I was like: Look, I've just done 'Kevin.' I don't want to do more postpartum things and I won't do that. And then I think I was doing 'Stone Mattress' for a while and I probably was just being terrible and didn't get back for ages. But then I was like, OK, I have an idea. If it's a love story — a bonkers, crazy love story — if it's got many layers to it, I'll do it as an experiment. We'll see how it goes. And then it kind of worked. A postpartum story isn't the whole picture. Neither is a love story. Right. I suppose it's a bit of a lot of things. I know that you like mashing up genres. Do you still want to make a horror film, like you've said in the past? I'm making a vampire movie. Really? Yeah. I can't tell you much. It's with Ezra Miller who was in 'Kevin.' He's the main character. That's in development. I feel like I may be waiting a while to see that one. [Laughs] You won't wait for 10 years. I don't have 10 years. I've got to do it quicker than that. That's what Jon [Glazer] said. We need to speed up. He's one of my favorite filmmakers. And PTA as well. How does it feel being at Cannes again? Actually, this time I feel quite relaxed. I think the first time I came, I got quite nervous. You get really wound up. My husband was a musician and I remember squeezing his hand so hard at 'Kevin,' he said, 'You're going to break my guitar hand.' People were coughing. It was a real Cannes audience — they're pretty hardcore. But now I feel quite relaxed because I like the film myself. Sometimes you're super self-critical. I was watching it in that big theater and I'm going: Change that, change that. We've only been editing for four or five months and that's not long. So we're still tweaking it. I did a mix in five days. When you're working with actors such as Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence, they bring so much iconography. How do you strip that away and be like, I've got this piece of work that I want to do here? I think they were very willing participants. There was a lot of trust. I try and create an atmosphere of trust and I just threw them into the fire. I did the sex scene on the first day. I thought it's a risk. It's either going to work or it's going to be disaster. But I could see there was chemistry. And when they arrived, I was getting them dancing. They were dancing together, synchronized. And it was fun. And then I think Robert was a little nervous, but then something just kind of broke the ice. Doing a sex scene on the first day will break the ice, I imagine. The first day I was scared. I was like, oh, my God, was this a good idea? But it actually was a good idea. Sometimes I've left those scenes for later and then it builds up so everyone's gotten all nervous. You start this scene and they're all thinking about it and overthinking it. So I just chucked them in the deep end. Then there was a different scene, a longer one, and there was loads of dialogue and we only had a few hours — the light was going, maybe an hour-and-a-half left. And I saw the DP lying in the grass, Seamus McGarvey. And we both looked at each other and were like: There's no way we're going to finish this scene. There's no way we can do it. And we're both lying in the grass and we look down at the grass and I look at him and I go, 'Well, what if they're like cats in the grass? Why don't we just do it here?' So I'm running back to the bloody actors and I'm going, 'Right, OK, we're changing the whole scene, taking all the dialogue out. And you're both cats. You're both like cats.' And they're both like, what the f—? You just discovered that in the moment? Yeah. Because we didn't have the time and I'm really glad I did. And they were so trusting. Robert was like, 'That was a good scene.' Then Jen went, 'Yeah, I can see it.' It was all at breakneck speed. We shot it in an hour or something. And you're giving them an experience they will never have with a director who follows a plan to the letter. Yeah. A film's a film but a script is a script. I mean, it's a different beast. You've got be able to throw things out if they don't work or you don't have time. So you go to think of something and often that's better. But after that first day, I knew they thought, oh, God, what are we in for? I've heard that Jennifer Lawrence was pregnant in real life at the time. Yeah. I didn't know that until about four weeks before [the shoot]. I think she was a bit nervous about telling me. I was like, 'You OK about this?' I was worried. But she was glowing and was so happy to play crazy. And she was excited by the ideas. She was like, 'Yeah, let's do it.' She's a punk, man. Your vision of America is very interesting to me. It's never super realistic so much as an amplified America from the point of view of someone outside it. What do you think about America these days? Well, I wouldn't want to live there right now, but I always loved America. I lived in New York for quite a long time when I was making 'You Were Never Really Here,' when I was making 'Kevin.' I've always loved New York. It's got a crazy, wild energy. L.A. I find a bit more difficult. I feel it's like 'Mulholland Drive.' But there's a beauty to it as well. The light is amazing. Your Montana of 'Die, My Love' is also unique, filled with local color but almost an abstract place where a marital unraveling can take center stage. What was important to you to emphasize, setting-wise? We actually shot in Calgary but Montana's just down. My backstory was that they lived in New York — he was trying to get in a band, it didn't really happen for him, he was kind of a slacker. And she's written a couple of things that got published. Now there's this idea that they'll have a new life, because the house is free and a lot of young couples, if they get something like that, they're like: I moved because New York's expensive. And then the house becomes its own entity, in a way. We shot the beginning already inside the house, not from the outside [going in], and for a reason: The house is looking at them. There were elements of 'The Shining.' I picked up on those. And when you have actors like Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte as parents, they create a kind of gravity of their own. Were they familiar with your films like Jennifer Lawrence was? No, I went to them because they both meant a lot to me growing up. My dad loved Nick. Since 'Badlands,' I've loved Sissy Spacek, In the book, the mother-in-law's kind of gone crazy, but she played it much more that she saw exactly what was happening. When we first meet the main characters, we hear them telling each other the lies they've probably been saying for a while: I could really record my album here. You can write your Great American Novel. Do you think that they end up in a place that's more truthful by the end of the film? I had writer's block as well for a while and I was like Jack Torrance in 'The Shining' writing the same sentence again. Recutting it. You get stuck in things and then when you've got a baby as well, it's much harder to do anything. Your life completely is turned upside down. So I think they've got all these aspirations: It's going to be great and wow. And then she just feels really isolated and she's stuck with a baby. And she's bored and she's just gone nuts. I suppose I did think about 'Repulsion' and, of course 'A Women Under the Influence' — that sort of tragedy where they love each other but don't understand each other. Do you ever feel trapped by the massive reputation of your early films? I love when I rewatch them, like, 25 years later. I saw 'Morvern Callar' with a young audience a year ago or something. A couple years ago, because the film was 20 years old, and it was really nice. It still played and they were all laughing and they really got it. I think that film was kind of dumped at the time because I think I pissed off the financiers. I wanted a different poster and I made a big deal about it — and I love the poster still. And they wanted something much more conventional. The poster for that is so perfect, though. I still remember it. It's flush with a kind of heat, an intimacy. I kind of fought for that. They wanted something that looked like a Mexican western or something. It was nice. But I've still got that poster in my place in Scotland against a black wall, where it really pops. And these kids were really getting it — even though she's got a Walkman, which is completely, I mean, a million years ago. It's a little dated, but it works. You captured something essential about Samantha Morton and now with Jennifer Lawrence too. Do you ever find yourself thinking in terms of awards or Oscars? No, I gave that up a long time ago. In fact, my mom had all my BAFTAs, so I hadn't seen those BAFTAs for ages. We were cleaning out her house. I gave all them away. Were they in her closet or something? No, she had a little cupboard that she just put them in, but I just kind of forgot about them. She was proud of you. Yeah, they were in a little glass cabinet and I forgot all about them. Then I got them back and it was weird. Where is home? Is it still Scotland? London, actually. And Scotland. I have a place in Scotland too, but my mom passed away quite recently — it was only a couple of weeks ago. So I had the funeral as well as filming and then it's been quite a challenge. Is she the one the film is dedicated to? Yeah. 'Die, My Love' is very explicitly about motherhood. What do remember about your mother? What did she teach you, in terms of being an artist? She taught me how to be a filmmaker, to be honest. She taught me to sit. I watched the best films when I was a kid and they thought I was deaf for a long time because I just ignored everybody else. It was a big noisy family. And I think she just showed me these cool films. Her big one was — I mean it sounds so random for me — but she loved 'Imitation of Life.' She watched that a million times. 'Mildred Pierce.' And 'Vertigo.' She taught you how to give yourself over to a film? Yeah, she just loved movies and so did my dad. But my dad would be a bit more annoying because he'd tell you the end. He'd be like, 'This is going to happen.' You know what I mean? And I'd be like, Dad! I wouldn't watch it. But I think she was a really interesting smart woman. Not from a film background. They were working-class people, blue-collar people. But they loved images, they loved cinema. Glasgow is a place of blue-collar intelligentsia. It's a really good education system there. So my dad was so bright — my mom as well. They used to say, 'Let's go to the movies, the pictures.' Really cute. And my mom had a photographic memory, so she would be like, 'This film is from 1940,' blah blah blah. And then this actor's in it. She'd know all these obscure actors. And it was great. They were excited and it made me excited. She just was a very kind person. Everyone was devastated. I'm sure you're still feeling it. I hope you don't mind me asking about her. I am. But I'm feeling a bit more at peace. It was quick and it wasn't expected. And funnily enough, the music supervisor's mom died one week later. I didn't know it was coming. So we're all a bit in shock. My mom, she was 88. She had a life. When will be the appropriate age for you to show your daughter your movies? [Laughs] I don't know, 18? How old is she now? She's 10. Maybe 'Ratcatcher.' Maybe about 16 or 15. I don't know. They're all kind of hardcore. You probably made it when you were 25. I did, somewhere about that or 26. My daughter's a really bright child. The one thing I've shown her that she came in for — I was watching it late at night and she woke up — was 'The Shining' and she was glued it. And I said, 'I don't think you should watch this — you're too young.' But there's only one killing in 'The Shining.' You know what I mean? And there's not a lot of horror. She loved it. I mean, it was like the best. She said, 'I might watch 'The Shining' again.' She's super artistic. Do I have a promise from you that I'm not going to have to wait 10 years for the next film? Nah, definitely not. I'm on it. Jon Glazer too. We're both like, we need to rock and roll, man.
