Kristen Stewart has been “eager to make motion pictures since I used to be 9 or 10 years previous,” she advised me on her fourth journey to Cannes in 2017, for the brief “Come Swim.” She’s been a fixture on the competition ever since her maiden voyage in 2012 with Walter Salles’ “On the Street,” adopted by Woody Allen’s “Cafe Society,” Olivier Assayas’ “Clouds of Sils Maria” and “Private Shopper,” and David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future.” She additionally served on Cate Blanchett’s Competitors jury in 2018.
Stewart’s audacious debut, the Un Sure Regard entry “The Chronology of Water,” was well-received. After eight years of growth, Scott Free financed the temper poem about swimming and writing for survival amid private trauma. Stewart is ebullient after having talked about making her first characteristic for therefore lengthy. Again in 2022, she introduced that she was adapting (with Andy Mingo) Lidia Yuknavitch’s frank 2011 memoir. Stewart resonated along with her hardscrabble story a few lady (Imogen Poots) coping along with her teenage sexual abuse by her father through intercourse, anger, aggressive swimming, dependancy, and artistic writing.
Stewart and I talked on a balcony on the Majestic Lodge. The interview has been edited for readability and brevity.
Anne Thompson: What made you so clear that you must flip this materials into your first characteristic? You went for it.
Kristen Stewart: It’s not a film concerning the issues that really occurred to Lidia. It’s concerning the issues that occurred to all of us, after which tips on how to take these issues into your physique. [They] won’t be equal or precisely just like the expertise and abuse particularly that she had. Her plight won’t be everybody’s, nevertheless it’s comparable. There’s thievery and violence within the fucking feminine expertise proper now, with the imagery that’s thrust at us and the conversations which can be had exterior of our our bodies and what they do to our internal voices, after we go: “I don’t suppose you must try this. Don’t say it, hold it a secret. Don’t inform anybody you’re in ache. Don’t inform anybody that that wasn’t OK with you. Preserve it to your self. Oh, don’t vouch for your self. Don’t struggle for that. Oh, don’t communicate too loud; they gained’t hear you.” Measure, measure, measure. Disgrace, disgrace, disgrace. And so it was not doable to drag again, as a result of the entire film is about getting that feeling out. I’ve by no means felt like a provocateur. I by no means was making an attempt to push buttons.
It doesn’t really feel like that. It feels such as you’re expressing your self in each fiber of your being.
It’s the reality. There was by no means a degree the place I ever questioned it, as a result of there was no approach that I used to be alone on this. The guide is such a lifeboat. It’s like a flotation gadget. It’s such a very good place to start out. It’s very meta to make a film about how exhausting it’s to say one thing that’s precisely what I used to be experiencing.
Over your profession, you’ve taken management of your selections. You’ve usually taken the indie route.
Completely. This was not with out assist. I wanted to have a few public mood tantrums with a view to get the proper individuals to pay attention. I’ve this gorgeous collaborator in Charles Gillibert, who [produced] “On the Street,” “Private Shopper,” and “Clouds of Sils Maria.” He understands that [women] need assistance and we want a fucking leg up. It took a very long time to get this made. Yeah. It took ceaselessly.
What hurdles did you face?
The guide isn’t concerning the issues that occurred to her, however about how she processes these issues, and about how artwork can prevent. And there was no strategy to promote the film as an concept. It was inconceivable to say to people who I wished to make a DMT journey expertise, a life flashing earlier than your eyes, in the way in which that your reminiscence feels neurological and bodily to you. It’s completely different from the guide. It’s a trustworthy adaptation, however it isn’t the identical expertise. There was no approach for me to inform people who I wanted to go make so many puzzle items that I might come residence and discover genuine, emotional connective tissue, since you can’t plan for issues like this. You’ll be able to’t plan for the ephemeral. You need to go catch it. You need to go create an surroundings wherein issues can sprawl and other people can discover and study issues. And so due to this fact, the film needed to have a life to ensure that it to have its personal reminiscence. It couldn’t be exacting, managed. My fingers and my fingerprints are throughout it, however I’m not strangling the film, as a result of the film had such volition, it had such its personal life, that it was telling me what it wished day by day.
Was the film completed once you introduced it to Cannes? Would you return to the modifying room?
The image is fairly closing, it’s color-corrected. I’m not going to chop it, OK? It deserves area. It’s not like the conventional success story that has a three-act construction within the phrases that we’re used to. Viewers are educated, everyone is, since you couldn’t be, to have a sure capability and a sure expectation for a rhythm and a time code: “I’m presupposed to get this now. I would like it. The place is it?” Very often within the film, there’s so many false wins and begins and exhausting crashes. And there’s an undulation that resembles a feminine orgasm that steps away from this 1-2-3, punch of the climax and a sigh of aid within the final 5 minutes, and the film’s over. You suppose you’re there, you suppose you’re there, you’re unsure. Then you definitely kill it, you then pull again, and you then’re: “Why am I nonetheless right here?” And it’s irritating at instances, in all probability. Three-quarters of the way in which via, you may suppose to your self, “The place are we going?” It’s intentional.
Imogen Poots anchors it.
She’s the explanation why you will get away with all the remainder of it, since you by no means need to cease hanging out along with her. Until we had any person who actually stored you on a line, we had been useless within the water.
How do you know she was the proper one?
She’s a strolling motif. Have a look at her eyes. Visually, I used to be bowled over when her face stuffed my Zoom display wherein we did a pseudo audition, aah, I began getting this sense: “Oh, my God, the film may exist.” As a result of with out Lidia — her physique is our film.
You don’t draw back from all of the orifices and points of a lady’s physique, and also you present lots of blood.
The second shot of the movie is intentional. Fifty % of the inhabitants isn’t going to marvel the place that blood got here from. It didn’t come from a wound. It’s textured and chunky, and it’s being sucked down a drain. She additionally comes into her hand so exhausting that it’s dripping from her fingers, and she or he smells it earlier than getting her thoughts blown by the sheer functionality of her personal physique. After which the hymen breaking, the entire instances that she was aching and itching and bleeding. How usually have you ever ached or itched or bled in public and simply been: “No, you by no means, that’s an alone expertise, it doesn’t matter what.” It’s isolating. I hate strolling round not telling individuals what’s happening with me.
It occurs to everybody. Girls will reply to this. It’s all concerning the bodily.
Sure — the film takes place on the floor of this lady’s pores and skin. We might prepare rocks on the sand in the identical configuration as my favourite sample of moles on her abdomen, simply to make it possible for we associated her to natural materials, to indicate that she grew right here. She didn’t select the issues that occurred to her. We’re gouged out. Our wishes are given to us. We expertise issues that we don’t select, after which they outline us for the remainder of our lives. [It’s] a guide about revering phrases, and the life-saving significance and significance of phrases. I additionally wished to remain exterior of any phrase, contained in the unnamed moist, as a result of we don’t must take credit score for all of the shit that comes out of us, however we are able to flip it into one thing that’s pleasure and ache directly and have that be one thing that you would be able to determine whether or not or not it hurts or it feels good.
It will need to have felt good for you. You’re a director now.
Oh man, it felt so good. I’m dying.
You’re going to do it once more.
I can’t wait.
Have you ever obtained issues within the hopper? Now they’ll give it to you simply.
Yeah, a number of. It’s going to be quite a bit simpler this time. I’ve at all times stated that so long as I could make one other film after my first one, that I don’t must be valuable or intelligent about it in any respect. It simply must really feel pure. I’ve earned the proper to strive yet one more time. I by no means need to make the identical film twice. So no matter comes out subsequent goes to not be something like this. I can’t fucking wait.
Jim Belushi is sensible as Lidia’s writing mentor, Ken Kesey.
He introduced pages to our pages. He’s a film star: He did a lot analysis. He was the person who we would have liked to come back pat us on the again and remind us that it’s okay to need approval from a male figurehead, it’s not bizarre, and it’s not anti-feminist. You’re not a nasty feminist if you would like somebody like Jim Belushi to pat you on the again and inform you that you just’re a very good lady.
Why did you shoot in 16 millimeter?
As a result of I didn’t need to report this. I wished to take footage so I might slice them up, and I wished it to really feel like a dream, and I wanted it to flash earlier than your eyes. And there’s simply an excessive amount of info in a digital picture. You’ll be able to’t put your self into it, and it additionally doesn’t communicate to time in the way in which that the film must. The film must fracture. You’ll be able to’t fracture a recorded picture. There’s no break. You get all the data. [The movie] is a very and completely inundating expertise. However for us, we solely have 24 footage each second, and generally much less as a result of we’ve pulled them out. And so we actually fuck with the expertise of literal time, and we put it again into the physique, and we are able to span 4 a long time fluidly, as a result of we shot on movie. And likewise, it does one thing to individuals on set. You notice your digicam has a heartbeat, you possibly can hear it when the digicam begins working — whir — everybody stands at consideration. It infuses an immediacy and a form of honor.
“The Chronology of Water” premiered on the 2025 Cannes Movie Competition. It’s presently in search of U.S. distribution.