Inside The Hollywood Reporter’s Star-Studded ‘Die, My Love’ Cannes Premiere Party: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, and a Flute-Playing Mystery

 

Inside The Hollywood Reporter’s Star-Studded ‘Die, My Love’ Cannes Premiere Party: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, and a Flute-Playing Mystery

The Cannes crowd didn’t exactly need another excuse to throw a party, but when The Hollywood Reporter teamed up with Longines to celebrate the premiere of Lynne Ramsay’s Die, My Love, they delivered a night that—well, I don’t want to say "felt like a movie," but... yeah, kind of.

Jennifer Lawrence arrived late but luminous, looping arms with Longines CEO Matthias Breschan like they’d done this all before. Robert Pattinson, fresh from a glowing six-minute ovation at the film’s Palais premiere, mingled with surprising ease. He was relaxed, maybe even buoyant—perhaps that’s the new dad energy he joked about during the press conference earlier that day. (Lawrence’s reaction? “You get energy?!” Classic.)

The location, Salama on Rue Florian, was as much a character as any of the actors. Low lighting. Warm buzz. A saxophone winding through clusters of half-drunk elegance. At one point, a man stood atop a nearby building, playing a flute to the crowd below like some Riviera Pied Piper. Nobody asked why, and somehow that made it better.

Inside, the drinks were theatrical too. A tequila-lime concoction dubbed “Die, My Darling.” A moody espresso cocktail named “Feral Bloom.” Someone swore by the “Love Is a Wound,” though honestly, after the second one, nobody cared what it was called. Sushi, falafel, sliders—standard Cannes fare, but the chocolate fondants and fruit skewers? Too easy to overdo.

Guests floated in and out. LaKeith Stanfield danced early. Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara made a brief, photoblock-worthy appearance (poor Pedro Pascal, camera in hand, thwarted). Charli XCX popped up, because of course she did. Ezra Miller, despite a red carpet flash earlier that evening, was a no-show at the party—some said they ghosted before dessert. Who knows.

Then there was the bird man.

Some thought turkey, others condor. Turns out he was a character from Raphaël Quenard’s I Love Peru, a documentary screened at Cannes Classics. Was it a joke? A performance? A minor hallucination from the “Die, My Darling” cocktails? Maybe a bit of all three.

The film itself—Die, My Love—is heavy. Lawrence’s portrayal of postpartum unraveling, paired with Pattinson’s quiet bewilderment, landed hard. She drew from personal experience—two children, filming while five months pregnant—and admitted it was hard to separate her own reactions from those of her character. “You feel like an alien,” she said of that time, and it didn’t sound like she was exaggerating.

What’s strange, and maybe kind of beautiful, is how the party didn’t try to erase the weight of the film. If anything, it balanced it. The laughter, the music, the sheer randomness of it all—it was like a collective breath out after something raw and intimate.

By night’s end, it was Sissy Spacek—yes, that Sissy Spacek, Lawrence’s onscreen mother-in-law in the film—who was still holding court. Not loudly, just gracefully. Like someone who knew she was watching a moment unfold, one that would matter later, somehow.

Cannes is full of moments like that. Not all of them make sense. Some don’t even feel real until days later. But this one? It stuck.