The Chronology of Water (Review) | BFI LFF 2025
Based on the 2011 memoir by American writer Lidia Yuknavitch, Kristen Stewart's debut is more experimental than narrative – and does more to honour than it does to analyse.
There's this concept of the Perfect Victim - someone who is beyond critique, who we know beyond a shadow of a doubt was harmed, and we can have wholesome feelings toward, because they were pure before and pure after.
"The Chronology of Water" has no space for this, toys a lot with the idea of purity, the ebbs and flows of how formative traumas and lack of control manifest into people's lives.
Even as I write this, flashes of the film come into focus, only as flashes. How Stewart depicts Lidia's father, the way she claws for writing even in the midst of fog, how she hurt those who loved her. This is the same effect the film has - it ties itself together seamlessly across a plethora of vignettes and memories and moments, without explanation, but you always always know where you are. You are not diverted or confused.
There are complicated feelings at the heart of this film – "before I hated my father, I loved him" – and it is a memoir after all. Stewart knows her purpose though - to spread the knowledge and the truth of the book through cinema in a way that helps people understand, not comprehend.
Jim Belushi puts in a career best – not his first dramatic role, but the beefiest since his "According to Jim" days. Holding the entire film together is a once in a lifetime performance by Imogen Poots, who can only give that performance because the safety of the piece feels crystal clear. And Kristen Stewart can totally direct, y'all. She knows her stuff.
It's heavy material, but well worth a watch, and the start of something amazing for Stewart as a filmmaker, I'm sure.
