SPOILER ALERT: This report contains spoilers about Lynne Ramsay‘s alternate ending to ‘Die My Love‘.
Lynne Ramsay still isn’t sure about the ending of her most recent film Die My Love. Speaking to an audience at the Glasgow Film Festival on Friday, the Scottish filmmaker admitted that getting the Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson starrer ready for Cannes in the edit was “a real rush job” and that she continues to battle with the idea of an alternate ending for the film and its characters.
In Ramsay’s adaptation of the Argentine writer Ariana Harwicz’s brutal novel, she strays from the book’s ending and audiences see Lawrence’s character Grace setting fire to a nearby wood and burning the book she has been writing. Ramsay told the audience in Glasgow that she filmed different endings and had a version in which Grace saves Jackson (Pattinson) from the forest. “Maybe one of these days I’ll get to that ending and I’ll change it and she will save him from the burning forest,” she said.
Die My Love premiered In Competition in Cannes last year and Mubi ended up acquiring the title for North America and multiple territories in a massive $24M deal. “Cannes wanted it, but it wasn’t ready,” recalled Ramsay. “But then when it was bought in Cannes there was all this pressure. It was bought for $24M and I was like, ‘Shit, I can’t change this…I’ve never been in that position before.”
She added: “If you buy something for that amount of money, you kind of want it to be what you bought, right?”
Ramsay was in her hometown where the festival awarded her its Cinema City Honorary Award and she also took part in a wide-ranging special In Conversation event dubbed ‘From Page to Pulse.”
In that conversation, which was moderated by Glasgow filmmaker Adura Onashile (Girl), Ramsay spoke about how she approaches adapting books for the big screen and makes her own interpretation of the stories. She reflected on her 1999 debut Ratcatcher, which won the BAFTA Outstanding Debut award, her follow up film Morvern Callar as well as We Need To Talk About Kevin and You Were Never Really Here.
She recalled adapting Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin and while that book is written in a series of letters, it compelled her. “It wasn’t visual but there was something so special in the subject matter,” said Ramsay. “I’ve never read anything like it – a mother who doesn’t know how she feels about her son. That was so compelling and I thought, ‘I need to visualise this’.”
Ramsay recalls being incredibly nervous when Shriver saw the finished film, particularly as the author hadn’t seen a sketch or even read the script before seeing the Final Cut. “She’s quite hardcore,” said Ramsay, admitting she was relieved Shriver was happy with the film version.
But Ramsay admitted that this wasn’t always the norm when it came to her adaptations. Speaking about Alice Sebold’s book The Lovely Bones, which Ramsay had originally been hired to adapt and direct, Ramsay recalls Sebold being displeased with her original adaptation. Ramsay ultimately never ended up making the film and Peter Jackson stepped in to direct instead.
“Alice said, ‘It’s in the public domain – you can’t change it.’ And I was like, ‘Oh God, I’ve changed it.”
Ramsay also spoke fondly of her experience of working with Joaquin Phoenix for her 2017 project You Were Never Really Here, saying he is “an astonishingly committed actor.”
“I was so intimidated by him at first,” she said.
When pressed about why her films often hold themes of tenderness mixed with brutality, Ramsay said: “Look at what’s happening now. You watch Trump all morning and sure everyone is thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ The crazy stuff happens, you know? And within all this violence there is also beauty as well. So, I suppose everything is complex. The characters are complicated and the world is complicated, so I’ll paint a picture of that.”
The Glasgow Film Festival runs February 25 – March 8, 2026.
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