THE STORY – A young woman finds her voice through the written word and her salvation as a swimmer – ultimately becoming a triumphant teacher, mother, and a singular modern writer.
THE CAST – Imogen Poots, Thora Birch, Earl Cave, Michael Epp, Susannah Flood, Kim Gordon, Jim Belushi & Tom Sturridge
THE TEAM – Kristen Stewart (Director/Writer) & Andy Mingo (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 128 Minutes
A flash of light. A blink of an eye. Ripples breaking the surface of water. Blood slowly washing down a drain. The opening images of “The Chronology of Water,” Kristen Stewart’s adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir, could come from anyone’s life. Then, the barrage of images grows more specific. A corner with rotting wallpaper. A sister’s face staring into your soul. A swimming trophy that seems to be dripping menstrual blood. The film’s first few minutes may shock some viewers for their unconventionality, with voiceover narration spelling out the film’s philosophy over images culled from the depths of memory. “It’s all about starting at the beginning,” Lidia (Imogen Poots) says, “but that’s not how I remember it,” detailing how memories come to her more in fragments with repetitions that form patterns. As a writer, she is both inside and outside her memories, knowing that she lived them but unsure where her memories end and her stories begin.
Lidia’s story begins and ends with her abusive father (Michael Epp), but that’s not where the film starts. Stewart begins the movie with an almost free-associative stream of images and sounds that aim to evoke a feeling instead of telling a specific story. This isn’t exactly a novel approach – Terrence Malick has been doing this kind of thing nearly his whole career – but it’s beautifully rendered. The magnificent editing by Olivia Neergaard-Holm includes some surprising, effective match cuts, connecting images and events across years, even decades, of Lidia’s life. The intensity of the montage makes Lidia’s headspace come alive, and it’s rarely a pleasant space to spend time, making it a bold way to begin your debut feature film. Still, Stewart has never shied away from making bold artistic choices in her career. You don’t work with filmmakers as singular and different as David Cronenberg (“Crimes of the Future“), Olivier Assayas (“Clouds of Sils Maria” and “Personal Shopper”), and Pablo Larraín (“Spencer“) if you’re not a fan of art cinema, and Stewart has clearly learned from the best.
Stewart’s ambition and skills still have limits at this point in her career behind the camera, and while the film’s kaleidoscopic style works, it’s also a bit of a cliché at this point, from the memory-as-fragments editing style to the faded Instagram filter that makes every frame look like an old slide. Stewart goes all in on making these elements as well-done as she can, but they’re choices any average first-time filmmaker would make and indeed have. At least it’s an approach that makes sense for the material, which directly deals with not only the trickiness of memory but substance abuse and how that can screw around with your perspective. It’s a wise choice that Stewart pulls off with aplomb, but given her influences and the list of people she’s worked with over the years, one can’t help but want there to have been a little more creativity on display.
Then again, perhaps the problem is the material. Yuknavitch’s life seems undeniably harrowing – physical, mental, and sexual abuse at the hands of parents and coaches; a stillborn baby; years of drug and alcohol abuse, which began when she was underage – but most addiction and abuse narratives follow roughly the same shape, and this story is no exception. In the moments when Stewart’s surfeit of cinematic style fades away to focus on the narrative in a more linear way, the material can’t hide how much it adheres to cliché. Not that there aren’t bright spots that elevate the material. Jim Belushi is fantastic in an unexpected role as one of Lidia’s mentors who takes advantage of her in insidious ways, and Stewart handles Lidia’s abusive home life sensitively, hinting at the horrors without getting too explicit.
The film’s best part, though, is Imogen Poots’s performance as Lidia. Stewart’s fragmented style means that Poots often has to communicate a lot of emotion in a very short amount of time, and she does so with ease. She dives deep into the character, dredging up some ugly emotions and submitting herself to some unflattering situations. Through it all, she’s a sturdy anchor for Stewart to build the film around, the calm eye in the film’s cinematic storm. You can’t look away when she’s onscreen, with her charisma and wild, darting eyes holding you captive throughout. Her emotional intensity makes the best of such eye-rolling lines as “something inside me was born still,” and you feel every bit of pain that Lidia suffers just by looking at her. Poots is tremendous, and while it’s possible that “The Chronology of Water” could work without her, there’s no doubt that she makes the most of every second of screentime, investing her whole being into the performance and putting the audience through the wringer alongside her. She’s the perfect actress to complement Stewart’s chosen style. Here’s hoping that they work together again now that Stewart has the confidence of her first feature under her belt. Given the skill on display here, she has a great film in her. “The Chronology of Water” is just her first step.
