One of the first shots in The Chronology of Water, Kristen Stewart\u2019s adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch\u2019s memoir of the same name, is a close-up of blood flowing into a shower drain, after Lidia (Imogen Poots) suffers a miscarriage. It\u2019s not the first time that Lidia\u2019s body has betrayed her, and it won\u2019t be the last, but it may be the betrayal that cuts the deepest.<\/p>\n
Lidia doesn\u2019t scream when she\u2019s eventually forced to pass her stillborn child out of her. She simply and quietly latches onto the detail that despite the rest of her child\u2019s body being corpse blue, her lips were still pink. It\u2019s a heartbreaking moment that Stewart tellingly lingers on. Where Poots largely portrays Lidia as a frayed, electric nerve for most of the film, in this moment she\u2019s a woman utterly hollowed out by the quiet horror of it all.<\/p>\n
Stewart\u2019s choice of a wide shot to capture Lidia\u2019s entire face stands in stark contrast to the uncomfortable close-ups and odd focal points that define the rest of the film. Lidia may not scream, but Stewart directs the scene with a fury that presents every unassuming scrap of the woman\u2019s memory as the scene of a crime. Which, to be fair, much of it was for Yuknavitch.<\/p>\n
Like the memoir it\u2019s based on, Stewart\u2019s film takes its title seriously. If a woman\u2019s life is a body of still water running deep, the toxic matter that drops into Lidia\u2019s life is years of childhood emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her father (Michael Epp). The general beats of Lidia\u2019s story feel familiar, which is its own kind of crime, what with accounts of abuse and assault being so terrifyingly ubiquitous that they almost feel mundane. And the beauty of Stewart\u2019s focus is how she excavates the profound from the mundane.<\/p>\n
Stewart fixates on the corners of rooms, the patterns of people\u2019s skin, the wrinkles on faces, and more, with the stream-of-consciousness editing making some masterful connections between the tiny details of every touchstone moment in Lidia\u2019s life. All of Lidia\u2019s anger, grief, and hate stemming from her trauma intensifies over the course of her life, and the thrust of the story is in the desperate attempt to calm the waters, or at least find the courage to signal to someone that she\u2019s drowning without taking someone into the depths with her.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a decades-long process that has its collateral damage, on everything from property to relationships. Lidia\u2019s body is a Judas throughout her life, and above all of Stewart\u2019s other fixations across her hauntingly fragmentary film is a near-Cronenbergian fascination and revulsion with the female form. Lidia\u2019s body is an effigy that she\u2019s willing to stab, slash, throw against objects and people, and every once in a while even respect and love in lurid detail.<\/p>\n
Poots, for her part, channels a vast, dark rainbow of destructive emotions, making it so the steadily increasing moments of peace, connection, joy, and acceptance, all hard won, that come later feel all the more earned and cathartic. Both the ugliest and most sublime, beautiful moments of Lidia\u2019s soul are captured in razor-sharp shards by Stewart, making this less a feature-length directorial debut than a violently explosive breach into a new aspect of her craft.<\/p>\n
Score:\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0Cast: Imogen Poots, Michael Epp, Susannah Flood, Thora Birch, Tom Sturridge, Earl Cave, Esm\u00e9 Creed-Miles, Kim Gordon, Jim Belushi \u00a0Director: Kristen Stewart \u00a0Screenwriter: Kristen Stewart \u00a0Distributor: The Forge \u00a0Running Time: 128 min \u00a0Rating: NR \u00a0Year: 2025
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