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Kristen Stewart has starred in her share of LGBTQ+ movies and, now, she’s marked her directorial debut, The Chronology Of Water, signifies such a film. The movie is an adaptation of the 2011 memoir of the same name by bisexual writer Lidia Yuknavitch, and Stewart has been talking about making it for years. As the film receives rave reviews, I wouldn’t have expected for Stewart to liken her movie to an orgasm, but here we are.
The Chronology of Water premiered at the glitzy Cannes Film Festival, where Kristen Stewart walked the red carpet in a gorgeous pink getup. The multi hyphenate seems quite proud of her film but, like me, some people may initially be surprised how she described it. When she spoke to Vulture about the making of the movie, here’s exactly what she said:
It was really hard to convince people that this movie was going to be fun to watch. Because it’s frustrating. It’s not the three-act success story that, as audiences, we’ve been trained to want. It’s like, ‘Aren’t we supposed to be happy now? Jesus Christ, you’ve dragged me through hell.’ It’s like a female orgasm. It’s like, ‘Almost, almost, almost. Stick with me, stick with me, stick with me!’ I don’t think the movie is long. It’s two hours and eight minutes, with a killer credit sequence that you have to see til the last frame to finish the movie.
So the orgasm comparison refers to the pacing of Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut. As she detailed, the movie builds up to a big finish rather than following a typical storytelling format. It’s taken the Oscar nominee years to get this passion project of hers off the ground and, as she suggested in the interview, that lengthy process is partially due to the content of the film. As she explained:
But it’s a serious fucking movie. We deserve to take up space. I didn’t need to make an hour and a half digestible experience so it would be less difficult for the consumer. It’s cool that at one point you go, ‘Are we still doing this? Why?’ I have ‘Why’ tattooed right here [points to her upper arm].
Stewart made these comments after being asked about the idea of there being a “feminine grammar of cinema that’s yet to be written.” As the actress discussed, there are still some uphill battles for female filmmakers as they strive to achieve their cinema-based goals without their being outside talk. Among those variables is the male gaze, which has been a lot more prominent in movies over the past century. It’s refreshing to hear a director speak so introspectively about their film while acknowledging the barriers she faced to make it.
The Chronology of Water is about the life of Lidia Yuknavitch, who used a college swimming scholarship to leave her abusive home. Imogen Poots plays Yuknavitch, who ultimately loses her scholarship over her own addiction with drugs and alcohol and moves to Oregon to start over. Her addiction persists while she’s in the Pacific Northwest. At the same time though, Yuknavtich also explores her bisexuality, and S&M also blooms there before she eventually settles down when she meets her husband.
Kristen Stewart revealed she’d been scripting the film over eight years but, along the way, she lost financing (“ten times”), “department heads,” and more. Over time, Stewart would constantly go back to the script and refine it as she had personal experiences that made her look at it differently.
It’s incredibly cool that Stewart has finally directed a movie of her own, which comes only a few weeks after her wedding. Stewart’s orgasm comparison is sure to stick with me and, while it may seem unexpected, it’s a logical way to describe her movie. The Chronology of Water has yet to be added to the 2025 movie calendar and, as of this writing, a distributor has yet to pick it up.