Grace and Jackson are madly in love. They fuck on the floor, chug beers, settle into a run-down family home, have sex again and again, dance, purr like tigers and await the arrival of their first-born. Once a promising author, Grace wants to return to work, but her irrational mood swings are becoming more frequent. What if her husband, a typical millennial wimp, is cheating on her on his business trips? What if his doting parents are, in fact, the spawn of Satan? What if the next-door neighbour is her true partner? What if it’s not just postpartum depression? What if the barking dog could finally be made to shut up? What if they are doomed to succumb to animalistic urges and have lost their love for good? How did Grace and Jackson end up like this?

Imagine a familiar cinematic trope: a close-up on a framed family portrait, where the closer the camera zooms in, the clearer the horror reveals itself. This is the emotional architecture of director Lynne Ramsay’s work, a powerful anatomy of gender roles and motherhood. The film not only stunned audiences at the Cannes Film Festival but also gifted unique “screen symphonies” to Hollywood stars Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, who come through in their brightest colours. In adapting Ariana Harwicz’s introspective 2017 novel, Ramsay not only reminds us of her consistent style (from her debut Ratcatcher (1999) to We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)) but also infuses the film with surrealist sighs, Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) and a good many rock ballads, calling this portrait of a married couple her “kind of comedy”.