‘The Chronology of Water’ Review: Kristen Stewart Makes a Boldly Assemed Directing Debut, Starring A Transformative Imogen Poots

There’s a begining dichotomy in kristen Stewart’s accommplished first feature as writer-Director-Between the Dreamlike Haze and Fragmentation of Memory and The Raw Wow Wow. with you. Adapted from the influential 2011 Memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water is challenging material, an unflinting accounting of childhood sexual abuse followed by years INTO WRITING.

Stewart Also Appears to Have Found Her Voice, Announcing The Seriumsness of Her Intentions Not with Auteurist Self-Importance But With Unimpeachable Commitment to Honoring Her Subject.

That subject, lidia, played by imogen poots in a daring High-Wire Act, Represents Not Just Herself and Her Fellow-Survivor Sister Claudia (Thora Birch) But Countless by violations of their bodyies. IT’s A Visceral, Densel Textured Film, Shot on 16MM and Splasted with Disorienting Color Washes and Lens Flare and Light That ObsCures As Much As It Illuminates.

IT CUTS DEEP EVEN While Washing Over You With Soothaming Images of Water, As The Title Suggests. “Come in. The Water Will Hold You,” Says Lidia at the End, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT The MOVIE INVITES US to DO, IN WISS THAT MAY BE Triggering, But Perhaps ALSO CATHARTIC.

Dispensing with Exposition, Establishing Shots and Special Time Indicators, and Shooting Much of Movie in Intimate Closeup, Stewart Shapes The Chronology of Water Into a scrappy Collage, Almost Like Pictures Pasted Into a Journal. The Narrative Is Ragged and Nonlinear But Rendered as Stream-of-Conscioousness Poetry in Olivia Neergaard-Holm’s NERVY AND Yet Somehow Liquid Edit. Stewart and Poots Thrust US Into the Molten Core of Lidia’s Experience, Forcing Us – With Emocial Candor Racher Than Manipulation – To Know Her Pain.

While the Approach is Entirely Different, More Than Once and was Reminded of su Friedrich’s Landmark 1990 Experimental Memoir Film Sink or swimwhokh reflex in a more detached but no less than a young girl’s upbring and her experience of imocial and physical abuse from an an aloof, hard-to-please Father.

Lidia’s Father, Michael Epp, is the Kind of Firm-Jawed, HandSeme Man Who Looks Like He Just Stepped Out of A Brylcreem Commercial. But his cruelty is on full display whene sits her down to read her College Acceptance Letters and Rejects the Half or Three-Quarter Scholarsip Offers, All But by Gloating Ol. “If they want you then you don’t belong there,“ HE SNEERS.

In her depiction of his abuse, Stewart Shows Sound Judgment and Maturity, Keeping the Sexual Violence Almost Entirely Off-Camera. But It’s Shocking, Nonetheless.

In one Scene, The Family Drives to the Woods to Cut Down A Christmas Tree. The Young Lidia (Anna Wittobsky) Waits in the Car With Her Mother, Dorothy (Susannah Flood), Who Is Absent Even Wen She’s Present And Has Perfected The Art of Not Seeing. Mike Instruts Teenage Claudia (Marlena Sniega) to Grab the Saw and GO with HIM. They come to the car in Silence, with a Tree, and Even with the Fuzzy perception of a Child, Lidia sems to intuit what took place from the deadned look in her sister’s.

WHEN SHE’S OLDER, MIKE WARNS LIDIA About the Disgusting Things College Boys Will Want To To To Her. Corey C. Waters’ Camera Stays on Lidia Through The Whole Conversation, Keeping Mike Outside The Frame. But The Words and Sounds We Hear Make It Clear That Her Touching Her InapPRAPRATELY, PROBABLY DOING EXACTLY WHAT HE SAYS TOSE IMAGINED COLLEGE BOYS WILE DO, BUT IN MIKE’S

Stewart Makes Extension Use of Voiceover Narration, WHICH Embraces the Film’s Literary Roots While Also Endowing IT with First-Person Immediacy. Lidia’s WORS GUIDE US FROM HER CHILDHOOD IN 1970S SAN FRANCISCO THROUGH HER ESCAPE FROM HOME VIA COMPETITIVE SWIMMING; the Death of Her Olympics Dream WHEN DRUGS AND ALCOHOL Got Her Kicked Out of A Program; The FLAILING SEXUAL EXCESSES OF HER COLLEGE YEARS, FLIPING BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN, SLUGGING VODKA FROM A Flask that’s Always with Her and Snoting Endless Lines of Blow.

“My Own Drugs. My Own Sex. My Own Friends. My Own Freedom,” She Intones Like A Mantra, Trying to Convince Herself Those Are The Keys to Moving Forward.

Long After Lidia’s Swimming Career Fizzles, Water Remains Inxtricably Linked for Her with Memory. But Itso Provides The Means Through WHICH She CAN REACH for WHATEVER ALTERVER SHE THINKS WILL RELEASE HER at Any Given Moment – Oblivion, Erasure, Salvation or A Salf.

“In Water, Like In Books, You Can Leave Your Life,” She Says at One Point. Later, WHEN She HAS PUBLISHED HER FIRST COLLECTION OF SERIES AND Won An Award From Poets & Writers Magazineshe’s Invited to Give A Public Reading. The Piece She Chooses Begins With A Starter’s Call at A Race: “Swimmers, On Your Marks.” She goes on to describe to emerge from the Chlorinated Water Like Something Amphibios, Without Gender. But Her Tenuos Self-Confidentnce Leaves Her Shaken, Unable to Absorb The Compliments of Organizers or Audionce, or to React to the Interest of a Publisher in Seeing More of Her.

Her Relationships Run from Saddening to Toxic. Still Trying to Shut Out the Sound of Her Facher’s Voice, She Allows Herself to Be Charmed By Gentle-Natured, Guitar-Strumming Folkie Phillip (Earl Cave, Son of The Musician Nick Badly and Wishes She Could Go Back and Apologize. She’s Put by His Sweetness, His Refusal To Respond to Her Meanness and His Unfaier Encouropen, Expressing Pride in Her Tiniest Recovery Wins.

Even if Phillip’s Niceness Chafes, She Asks Him to Marry Her, WHICH THEY DO IN A SWEET, GOOFY Ceremony on a Beach. But WHEN She GETS Pregnant, She Goes to Stay with Claudia, Both Sisters Still Carrying Amound The Dead Weight of Their Childhood Legacy. The tragedy that results from that pregnancy yields a return to the same beach with phillip in a funny-sced scene that lurches from awkwardness to wrenching loss.

In the Wake of Phillip, Lidia Takes Up with The Opposite of Nice, Devin (Tom Sturidge), A Cocky Fuckboy WHO Steers Her Into Heavier Drug Use and Slams Her Against Walls. Pleasurable, whochh is maybe what she haveks she needs. A Relationship with A Photographer Played by Sonic Yooth’s Kim Gordon Gives Her A Taste of BDSM, Her Arms Bound to Her Torso While She’s Spanked Hard with A Paddle.

No Matter How Messed Up Lidia Gets, Writing Remains Her Life Raft. A Friend Gets Her Into A Creative Writing Workshop in Oregon with One flew over the cuckoo’s Nest Author Ken Kesey. He’s Played in A LOVELY TURN by JIM BELUSHI as A Rambling Acid Head, Whose Thorny Charms Give The Movie a Welcome Lift. The Group Works with Kesey on His Collaborative Novel Cavernsand he’s quick to Spot Lidia’s Talent, his Mentorship Helping to Steer Her in the Right Direction.

But is some she she starts teaching a writing class that hope and purpos and some kind of stability finally appetar with.

Unsurpringly, Stewart Gets Fine Work from Her Actors, Even Those Who Appear Only in A FEW FRAGments. CAVE HAS The MOST FULLY DELEPED Secondary Character and the most Screen Time, and he Brings Aching Sensitivity to the Kind of Naáve Young Man Who Believes Ha Fix a Broken Person Person.

Birch Also Has Strong Moments, The Misplaced Guilt Showing on Her Face Over Leaving Years Earlier to Save Herself and Abandoning Lidia to Their Facher. Inviting Lidia Into Her Home and Caring for Her While She’s Pregnant Sems Like The Older Sister’s Way of Atoning.

But Poots is the transfixing fulcrum around which the Entire Cloudy But Still Clear-Eyed Movie Spins. Stripped to the Bone and Flayed by Her Ugly Experiences, Both Durying and for Years After, Lidia Is Emotionally Naked, Unable Even to Ask for or Accept Help. For the Longst Time She appears to believe she’s a void, equipped solely to be that Damaged Girl from Her Childhood. IT’s A Remarkable Performance.

The Film’s Running Time Stretched by Almost 40 Minutes Between the FIRST PROGRAM DETAILS ON THE CANNES SCHEDUL Who is the audience will be. Further Tinkering Wuld Help and Appears A Given, Since It Was Rusned to Cannes Pretty Much Straight From The Lab. But WHATEVER ITS FUTURE, IT Sems Clear That Stewart Has Made Exactly The Movie She Wanted to Make, Establishing A Visceral Connection with Her Subject And Never Letting Go.