Kristen Stewart's daring directorial debut

No other female star has distanced herself as much, through her professional choices, from the image of the teenage actress who rises to fame with the most popular teen romance of her time as Kristen Stewart. In her directorial debut, an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch's autobiographical novel of the same name, Stewart also avoids falling into the most worn-out model of independent cinema. Unexpectedly, she adopts aesthetic strategies more typical of the experimental realm, such as hyper-fragmentation, blurring, and non-linear structures, which allow her to break away from two commonplaces of cinematic mise-en-scène.

Starting from the subjective experience marked by the trauma of the protagonist, a young swimmer who confronts her painful and unspoken past by surrendering to a life of excess, The chronology of water It highlights the unstable and fragile nature of memory through structural, poetic, and visual resources, and not only through narrative. Furthermore, the director manages to address sexuality in a direct, intimate, and unconventional way, while avoiding the traditional voyeuristic perspective. The choice of supporting actors is more than appealing: it brings back another teenage actress, Thora Birch; gives Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) a small but charismatic role; and allows Jim Belushi to shine in an unexpected register. While the film is sufficiently daring and unorthodox in its parts, the overall effect is less satisfying. The intensity of Imogen Potts's omnipresent performance feels somewhat tiresome, and the dramatic arc of her character—a story of overcoming adversity through art that culminates in the founding of a traditional family—ultimately becomes entirely predictable and conventional.