Jennifer Lawrence opened up about one of the differences between working with female directors and male directors, revealing that she believes women directors don’t “overdirect” like men do.
During a recent post-screening Q&A for Die My Love, Lawrence reflected on working with director Lynne Ramsay on her new film and explained how the experience was different than working with a male director.
“I have found a commonality in female directors, which is that they do not do this thing, which is overdirect,” Lawrence told Vulture. “There have been some times when I’ve worked with male directors where there’s this need to constantly feel like they’re directing the movie. And it’s not even really getting anything done. It’s just annoying. When I think auteur, my mind kind of goes to controlling and … what’s that word? Neurotic!”
Lawrence went on to note that Ramsay “was the opposite” of that approach. “She really built this world and made sure that we were all on the same page, through music and conversations and the atmosphere and the set. And then she would just kind of slowly walk back,” she said.
“And sometimes, from the discomfort of that, from the lack of her visibility, something interesting would come from it,” Lawrence continued. “And then she would come out and be like, ‘That’s great, great, yeah, do it again.’ Or we would accidentally laugh and be like, ‘Oh, sorry.’ And she’d be like, ‘No, it was great. I liked that you laughed. Do it again.’”
Ramsay also discussed her directing style on the movie during the Q&A and revealed she wanted to actors to feel free on set.
“I love working with actors. When you really trust each other, something just happens that’s magical,” she said. “So sometimes I’d let the take run long. There’s a kind of discomfort in that. It’s like, ‘What the hell did we do now?’ But then something happens sometimes. I gave them the space in that house to just explore and go in and out of doors. There was one scene where Grace is just bored in the house and there’s that laundry basket, and I didn’t ask her to tip it over with her toe, but there’s a kind of rage in that.”
Based on Ariana Harwicz’s 2012 novel of the same name, Die My Love follows Grace (Lawrence) as she plunges into psychosis amid a loveless marriage shortly after she gives birth. The movie also stars Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Nick Nolte and Sissy Spacek.
Lawrence also previously spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about working with Ramsay, saying that the director was “very emotionally led.”
“A few weeks before shooting, we all went up to Calgary and we had really long discussions about our characters. Not really rehearsals — just conversations. Then she shows us around the house, and the house kind starts to feel like another character,” Lawrence said of the director. “She does so much world-building that by the time that you actually get there, she steps back a little bit and goes into more of an observational mode. But she’s also a cinematographer — she actually is a cinematographer, and her gift with composition, and she could just make every shot look like a [William] Eggleston. She has such a gift.”
