‘It is Awful’ Working Hard on a Movie Only for the World to Hate It’
Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s psychodrama, in which Jennifer Lawrence gives a fearless performance as a woman who descends into unbearable pain, cracking under muliple duresses of a new baby, unfulfilling career, and dissatisfying marriage to an insesnitive absent husband, played by Robert Pattinson (who’s miscast).
Ramsay has penchant for dramatizing toxic relationships and damaged psyches, of both males and females (“We Need to Talk About Kevin,” un 2011, “You Were Never Really There” in 2018).
This adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s novel feels misguided by the intensity of Ramsay’s approach.
The director pushes her formalism to an extreme level, which does not contribute (it actually diminshes) the film’s central dilemmas.
There have been better, more poignant films about unfulfilled married women and mothers descending into a debilitating statis, bordering on alientation, loss of self respect (and self-worth) and ultimately madness.
Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence told V magazine that releasing a movie can be an “awful” experience for her emotions as the public decides whether or not it is good or not.
“The experience only adds to the dread, because I’ve had so many experiences of working so hard on something, loving something so deeply, and then releasing it to the world, and the world just being like, ‘Boo! Hate you!’ It is so awful,” Lawrence said. “And [yet] somehow, I read a script, I meet with the director, we get on set, we start doing it, and somehow I’m able to forget that this part of the process will happen. I mean, I’m very blessed and very lucky. But it’s a very scary few months.”
Lawrence has been making press to support her latest drama, Die My Love, which world premered at Cannes Fest to poor reviews.
She stars in the movie as a new mother who descends into psychosis. Robert Pattinson plays her unhelpful husband.
In several recent interviews, Lawrence has gotten brutally honest about her anxiety over doing interviews during press tours for her movies.
she took a two-year break from Hollywood because “everybody had gotten sick of me. I’d gotten sick of me.”
Speaking to The New Yorker last month, Lawrence admitted that she understood why the public “rejected” her personality because she actually was “annoying” in old interviews.
