Taking a big creative swing as a public figure whose personal and professional life has been minutely scrutinized since childhood is a risk — and a calculated one in Kristen Stewart’s case. The “Personal Shopper” actor spent eight years developing her feature debut, “The Chronology of Water,” an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s eponymous memoir chronicling her escape from an abusive home through competitive swimming in the 1980s, and the many troubled, thorny years that would come after that separation.
British actor Imogen Poots plays the American writer from early teenagehood until her late 30s, with Stewart first finding Lidia as a young girl whose vision of the world is blurred by the painful contradiction of loyally loving those who hurt you most. Those childhood days are at once sparse and precise, the camera travelling through tight corridors to find shut doors to bedrooms where secrets are not as much secrets as a clammy, suffocating binder, tying the women of the house together in a knowledge ever-felt but never spoken.
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Around the house, a presence lurks, felt even when amiss. The stern Yuknavitch patriarch is a man of extremes, either sitting quietly on a black leather chair strategically positioned to cover the full perimeter of the shared living spaces, or cutting through the small house like thunder, long arms violently ripping at plaster and skin alike. If the women around him unravel, once luscious hair matting atop greasy scalps and skin coated in sweat and dirt and blood, the man remains pristine — black hair finely combed and styled, spotless dark thick frame glasses, white shirts pristinely ironed and tailored trousers pleated to perfection. In this, he exists as a vampire, growing stronger at the expense of others’ energy, draining and draining and draining until there is no force left for him to be met with. Or so he thinks.
Structured in five chapters, “The Chronology of Water” is largely linear in its telling of Lidia’s life but confidently built upon a sustained sense of disorientation. As events unfold, the timeline zigzags between what has been shown and what is to come, with Stewart frequently resorting to jolting, heavily-stylised cuts and sonal echoes to reflect the contrast between the plasticity of ever-long morose days and the jolting intensity of rushed moments of self-destruction. 
The actor’s debut is big on atmosphere. Shot in 16mm, the raw edges of the film are left unmasked, adding to it a certain roughness. It is a choice that feels at times a little too on the nose, an unnecessary calling card, but that also reinforces Stewart’s affection for the tangibility of the form. Here, there is a constant playfulness with the physical possibilities of film— be it through exposure, seesawing between over- and undersaturation, or curt shifts in focus that help communicate Lidia’s weariness. While the heavy-handedness might do away with some of the film’s polish, its earnestness compensates for it, the film dripping with the preciousness of a filmmaker who has mulled over every little detail of a story for many a year. 
While this preciousness positively serves the film directorially, it often goes the opposite way when it comes to the writing. Written by Stewart in collaboration with Andy Mingo, the script is overlong and overstretched, resorting to repetition almost to the point of frustration. This is particularly true of the first couple of chapters, where we linger in the family house for a little too long. Still, the film is quick to elicit generosity, and it is no major hurdle to offer a certain forgiveness to the script when enraptured by inspired moments of tender intimacy or, conversely, cruel spite. 
Alongside cinematographer Corey C. Waters, Stewart frames female bodies with a loving, passionate gaze. The camera hovers above folds and crannies, hair as sprouting seeds coming out of fertile ground. Stretch marks pave the way to a land of intimacy, and fingernails are stained with blood, unimpeded by the prudishness of those unfamiliar with the natural cycles of womanhood. It is in these moments that Stewart’s acting background becomes clearest, even more so than the dense stretches of dialogue where you can see her acting style seeping in. This framing is that of someone who understands the burden of being looked at and the power of being seen.  
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And no one is more seen in “The Chronology of Water” than Poots, who allows herself to be consumed with the urgency and hunger of Lidia. The writer is a woman floating in the world without an anchor, held only by water, nested in the single space where gravity can’t pull one down further. Poots understands this dichotomy of weightlessness and heaviness, and throws herself in entirely in the film’s scatological exploration of trauma and despair. She spits and bleeds and climaxes with great intensity, finding in pleasure both friend and foe. It is a powerhouse performance that roots a film that merits it, and signals Stewart as just as interesting a directorial voice as she is a performer. [A-]
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