Die My Love: The story behind Lynne Ramsey’s twisted, sexual fever dream

While shooting her fifth feature, Die My Love, the 55-year-old Scottish director Lynne Ramsay realised they were running out of time to finish a scene. With the natural light disappearing and reversal film stock proving tricky, they still had to film a marriage proposal that was accompanied by heaps of dialogue. “I saw the DP lying down in the grass,” says Ramsay. “I crawled over to him. We were like, ‘Let’s just do it like this.’”

So Ramsay instructed the film’s two stars, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, to crawl on the grass, too. More specifically, they had to crawl like cats. “They were like, ‘What the hell?’ and then they were like, ‘OK,’” says Ramsay. “There’s an element of trust. It’s much more interesting than the scene I originally was going to do. Robert looked at me a few times, and was like, ‘You’re completely crazy.’ But they went with it.”

Ramsay, who’s in an especially cheerful mood during the London Film Festival, can get away with wild, animalistic requests to Hollywood stars because she’s the auteur behind films like Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, and We Need to Talk About Kevin. A self-confessed perfectionist (it’s been eight years since You Were Never Really Here) whose output still feels thrillingly alive, Ramsay is the ideal orchestrator of a wild drama like Die My Love.

Swapping New York for Montana, Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Pattinson) are a hard-partying, beer-drinking couple who will dance maniacally in the kitchen and then have sex on the floor. Once they become parents, though, the pair grow distant in their rural environment: Grace, a novelist with writer’s block, has unfulfilled sexual needs and increasingly violent urges; on more than one occasion, she smashes her body through glass.

Just before filming, Ramsay learned that Lawrence was pregnant. However, the actor was adamant about continuing with the shoot. “Women, when they’re pregnant, can get quite strong,” says Ramsay. “If you could bottle pregnancy, it would sell a lot.” Did Ramsay feel creatively different when she was pregnant? “I wrote You Were Never Really Here when I was pregnant, which makes me worry! No, I’ve got the sweetest little girl ever.”

Like a fever dream, Die My Love explores Grace’s anger, frustration, and even hallucinations through visually and aurally audacious sequences. It could be a forest burning to the ground, or a biker (Lakeith Stanfield) who’s summoned when Grace is craving company at night. You sense the all-consuming, pent-up emotions boiling within Lawrence as she struggles to stand still, and then witness it in her evocative, sometimes terrifying surroundings.

“I wanted to do a real forest fire, but we couldn’t find anywhere to burn a forest,” says Ramsay. “I was trying my hardest. It’s not in the book. I just felt like she wants to burn the world down. It’s a metaphorical liberation. She burns the book, and you’ve never even seen her write.”

Women, when they’re pregnant, can get quite strong. If you could bottle pregnancy, it would sell a lot

At Cannes, an early cut of Die My Love was heavily praised as a movie about postpartum depression. However, Ramsay is adamant that those critics were wrong, even if they were hugely positive in their assessment. “People want to put things in a box,” she says. “It’s this or that. I’ve never seen it or read the book [as being about postpartum depression]. She’s blocked creatively. They’re sexually blocked. They’re not having sex anymore. There’s a baby. They’re stuck in this landscape. Everything is driving them crazy.”

Ramsay and two writers (first Enda Walsh and later Alice Birch) adapted the script from Ariana Harwicz’s 2012 novel Die, My Love, which was sent to Lawrence by Martin Scorsese after it was picked for his book group (for the film’s title, Ramsay took out the comma because “it felt stronger”).

The clearest sign of the director adding her personal stamp is in the end credits when she sings a cover of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. She also wrote and sang on a punk track, “Zero”, that appears near the start. Both songs came from Ramsay jamming with George Vjestica (one of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds) and the music supervisor Raife Burchell. “They asked if I’d sing [the Joy Division song] into an iPhone,” she says. “It happened in an organic way. I was all for taking it off. But we used it at Cannes, because we were experimenting. I was like, ‘It’s a great song, but you only ever hear it one way.’”

At university, Ramsay studied photography, which she credits for her ability to capture unplanned moments on set. On You Were Never Really Here, Joaquin Phoenix would provide a different take every single time. “Joaquin is a complete genius. You never know what he’s going to do. It’s great in the edit, because you’ve got all these options.”

Lawrence and Pattinson provide their own spontaneous energy, too, especially when Grace repeatedly barks in response to their noisy dog. After the third yapping exchange, I started to wonder if Lawrence is imitating the dog, and the dog in return is imitating Lawrence. I present the theory to Ramsay, who says she’s going to steal it for herself, adding, “That dog never did what it was meant to do. It was the most annoying dog in the world.”

There’s often talk about how a film reveals “very human” emotions, but Die My Love presents a twist: it concludes that to be very human is to behave like a cat. I share with Ramsay that often when I’m sad, I imagine that I’m a cat. The director is delighted to hear such a weird confession. “I know. I feel like a cat. I felt like a cat yesterday. But I’m starting to feel like a dog today.”

She’s blocked creatively. They’re sexually blocked. They’re not having sex anymore. There’s a baby. They’re stuck in this landscape. Everything is driving them crazy

Ramsay still hopes to make Polaris, an Arctic thriller starring Phoenix, and Stone Mattress, which “just needs a little bit of extra money”. She elaborates, “I’ve got a visual deck of Stone Mattress. It’s 500-and-something images. It took me three weeks to make. Pitch decks are [usually] a couple of images, but this is the whole actual film. I went absolutely nuts. It’s like a graphic novel. That’s something I’d like to publish.” There’s also a vampire movie she’s writing with Ezra Miller. “He’s a really intelligent guy. It’s in the early stages. Well, not that early stages.”

Whatever happens, it’s proven that Ramsay’s films have longevity. A few years ago, a 35mm print of Morvern Callar screened at BFI Southbank. Many in the audience weren’t alive when it was released in cinemas. “When it first came out, I don’t think distributors got it at all,” says Ramsay. “They were like, ‘What the hell is this? Why is it not a gay drama where they have sex, and do this and that?’ It was ahead of its time. It’s a film about these mad friends. It’s bonkers what happens.

“It was great seeing it with a young audience. I was like, ‘This is 25 years old.’ But they were laughing, vibing, and getting into it. It’s such a pleasure when that happens, because you know you’ve made something that’s lasted the test of time.”

Die My Love is out in cinemas on November 7