“I can’t wait to make 10 more movies,” Kristen Stewart advised AFP the morning after making what Rolling Stone referred to as “one hell of a directorial debut” on the Cannes movie pageant.
Nor can movie critics judging from the rave critiques of “The Chronology of Water”, her startling tackle the American swimmer Lidia Yuknavitch’s visceral memoir of surviving abuse as a toddler.
All the producers who Stewart stated handed on her script, saying its subject material made it “really unattractive” to audiences, should now be crying into their champagne.
Variety referred to as it “a stirring drama of abuse and salvation, told with poetic passion”, whereas Indiewire critic David Ehrlich stated “there isn’t a single millisecond of this movie that doesn’t bristle with the raw energy of an artist”.
The proven fact that she has received such notices with what is generally a no-no topic in Hollywood — and with an avant-garde strategy to the storytelling — is exceptional.
“I definitely don’t consider myself a part of the entertainment industry,” stated the “Twilight” saga star, dressed head to toe in Chanel.
And these in search of one thing gentle and frothy would do higher to keep away from her unflinching movie.
Stewart has lengthy been obsessive about the story and with Yuknavitch’s writing, and fought for years to make the film her means.
“I had just never read a book like that that is screaming out to be a movie, that needs to be moving, that needs to be a living thing,” she advised AFP.
That Yuknavitch was “able to take really ugly things, process them, and put out something that you can live with, something that actually has joy” is awe-inspiring, she added.
“The reason I really wanted to make the movie is because I thought it was hilarious in such a giddy and excited way, like we were telling secrets. I think the book is a total lifeboat,” stated Stewart, who additionally wrote the screenplay.
It definitely saved Yuknavitch and made her a cult author, together with her viral TED Talk “The Beauty of Being a Misfit” inspiring a spin-off e-book, “The Misfit’s Manifesto”.
“Being a woman is a really violent experience,” Stewart advised AFP, “even if you don’t have the sort of extreme experience that we depict in the film or that Lidia endured and came out of beautifully”.
Stewart insisted there have been no autobiographical parallels per se that drew her to the unique e-book.
But “I did not need to do a bunch of analysis (for the movie). I’m a feminine physique that is been strolling round for 35 years. Look on the world that we reside in.
“I don’t have to have been abused by my dad to understand what it is like to be taken from, to have my voice stifled, and to not trust myself. It takes a lot of years (for that) to go. I think that this movie resonates with anyone who is open and bleeding, which is 50 percent of the population.”
Stewart — who forged singer Nick Cave’s son Earl because the swimmer’s first husband and Sonic Youth rock band’s Kim Gordon as a dominatrix — advised reporters she was by no means actually tempted to play Yuknavitch herself.
Instead she forged British actor Imogen Poots, who she referred to as “the best actress of our generation. She is so lush, so beautiful and she’s so cracked herself open in this”.
“She has this big boob energy in the film — even though she is quite flat-chested — these big blue eyes and this long hair.”
She described her film’s fever-dream vitality as “a pink muscle that is throbbing” and that Poots was in a position to faucet into, channelling Yuknavitch’s ferocious however usually chaotic battle to rebuild herself and discover pleasure and happiness in her life.
“Pain and pleasure, they’re so tied, there’s a hairline fracture there,” Stewart advised the Cannes Festival’s video channel.
Yuknavitch’s e-book “sort of meditates on what art can do for you after people do things to your body — the violation and the thievery, the gouging out of desire. Which is a very female experience.”
She stated “it is only the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive”, and that artwork and writing helped liberate Yuknavitch and discover a pores and skin she may reside in.
Stewart stated Yuknavitch found that the one strategy to take need again was to “bespoke it… and repurpose the things that have been given to you in order for you to own them.”
“I’m not being dramatic, but as women we are walking secrets,” the actor stated.
© 2025 AFP