52 Films by Women Vol 9. 26. The Chronology of Water (Director: Kristen Stewart)
For her feature debut as writer-director, actress Kristen Stewart has
adapted Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir, The Chronology of Water, an account
published in 2011 of traumatic childhood and young womanhood from 1980 to the
early 2000s. Both book and film are organised in five sections: ‘Holding Breath’,
‘Under Blue’, ‘The Wet’, ‘Resuscitations’ and ‘The Other Side of Drowning’. Stewart’s
film is heavy on style: close-ups, match cuts, quick edits, flashes,
fragmentation, voiceover. Such techniques can suggest inner torment – they do
here – but also ward off empathy. Stewart is torn between showing Lidia (Imogen
Poots) caught in the throes of trauma and illustrating her subjectivity through
point-of-view shots, used on non-sentient objects, such as blood in a swimming
pool. She neither serves the actress
well, preventing Poots from being the means by which we vicariously experience
Lidia’s trauma, nor commits to a mise-en-scene that replaces what the
actress can give.
When you recall trauma, you remember the actions of others, how you felt
afterwards, and you treated others as a result. You also reach an epiphany,
when you recognise the effect of your reflexes and learn to keep them in check.
The most affecting part of Stewart’s film is when a male admirer explains how
he had witnessed parts of her life, was present at a reading and so on and saw
her from a distance. He offers understanding and the possibility of care. Distance
– explainers – is the one technique in a film director’s toolkit that Stewart
doesn’t use. She could usefully learn that you don’t betray your subject by
adding some context.
Literary fidelity is not the only reason Stewart chooses to omit
distance. She wants to present life in a bubble, created as a form of
protection. A trauma victim has two conflicting impulses, to separate
themselves from everybody in order to guard against further damage, and to
displace the trauma with some other endeavour that involves engaging with the
world on one’s own terms. The engagement necessarily involves keeping others at
a distance and constantly challenging those who get close to provide
reassurance that they are not the abuser in another guise.
Stewart’s approach – no distance, no explainers – also doesn’t let the
abuser off the hook. Abuse is shown to have unreasonable cause - the product of
self-loathing. It is visited on undeserving family members who cope either by
ignoring it or seeking to escape. Lidia’s sister, Claudia (Thora Birch) does
the latter, fleeing the Yuknavitch household when old enough to do so, leaving
Lidia bereft. ‘I changed my name,’ she announces in one scene, another means by
which she can separate herself from the past. In the film, we sense that Lidia
does not entirely forgive Claudia for not taking her with her.
Lidia’s father (Michael Epp) is presented in profile rather than head on,
the better to restrict sympathy. A clean-shaven disciplinarian, he belittles
his daughter. ‘They only offered you a half scholarship. They don’t think much of
you,’ he announces as he opens the results of Lidia’s college applications for
her, one at a time; Lidia is not even allowed to open her own post. The camera
focuses on the name Purdue – the university that makes the third offer. Lidia
took up a scholarship at Texas Tech but dropped out, succumbing to substance
abuse, a promising swimming career over before it began. Stewart shows her
winning a race, outpacing the opposition, receiving a medal. However, the race
isn’t contextualised.
Pictured: A moment of self-reflection. Lidia (Imogen Poots) in a scene from the film, 'The Chronology of Water', adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch's 2011 memoir by director Kristen Stewart. Still courtesy of Les Films du Losange (France).
Lidia wasn’t free from punishment during her training. We see the bottoms of swimmers being smacked, punished for underperformance. Stewart cuts before the point of impact, but we hear the sound. We don’t hear the sound of the swimmers reacting; Stewart doesn’t want to reproduce the gratification experienced by the abuser.
Lidia marries Philip (Earl Cave) a man sensitive to her pain. Their
ceremony takes place on a beach, with her parents as witnesses. She comes to
resent him. When Lidia obliquely asks Philip whether she should terminate her
pregnancy, he responds, ‘you do what you want knowing I will support you.’ ‘Why
are you so f – ing passive?’ she responds. In the event, the child is
stillborn. ‘Why are its lips pink?’ Lidia asks, bringing the baby closer to
her, wanting to hear the sound of its breath. The child is taken from her and
cremated. Lidia tosses the ashes in a box out to sea, only for the tide to
return it to her. More cursing. She wades into the sea and scatters the ash,
some of which clings to her clothes.
Stewart shows Lidia’s pen forming sentences on page, writing outside the
lines, often diagonally; there’s symbolism in that. She enrols on a creative
writing course chaired by ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ author Ken Kesey
(Jim Belushi), who asks his students to contribute to a jointly authored novel
entitled ‘Cavern’. Kesey is presented sympathetically – Lidia’s first real non-violent
mentor – and Stewart allows Belushi to give a relatively unmediated
performance. Belushi’s own acquaintance with drug abuse, which killed his more
famous brother John, bleeds into the role. You feel Stewart’s respect for the
actor, who in turn gives the viewer a sense of what the film would be like with
some distance. Lidia’s father turns up for the reading and congratulates her
for her work. ‘You didn’t make me look good,’ he says regretfully and without
irony.
Pictured: Wasted, Lidia (Imogen Poots, right) in a scene from the film, 'The Chronology of Water', adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch's 2011 memoir by director Kristen Stewart. Still courtesy of Les Films du Losange (France)
Lidia’s frank descriptions of giving birth to a stillborn child disgust
some creative writing students. She writes poetry. A woman asks, ‘have you
shown anybody these?’ She reads from the work of Kathy Acker, with whom the
real Yuknavitch had a relationship, though not shown in the film. Her mother
dies and her father’s cognitive facilities diminish. Lidia marries a second
time and teaches creative writing at a university.
‘My mother wrote,’ the screen Lidia tells us. ‘My father drew pictures.’
We see a pencil drawing of a robin. Father designed houses whilst
metaphorically tearing his own apart. We are not sure whether Lidia’s writing
saves her, but she survived a tumultuous youth and will no doubt enjoy a surge
of interest in her work. The Chronology of Water is not a film
about making peace with one’s past or demonstrating that writing helps. Rather
it poses a question: can any trauma truly be displaced?
Reviewed at Picturehouse Central,
Shaftesbury Avenue, London, Monday 6 October 2025, 13:10, London Film Festival
Press and Industry screening.
Postscript: Stewart uses pronouns 'they/them'. The film has been acquired for distribution in the UK by the British Film Institute.
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