Inspired by the 2011 memoir of American college swimmer Lidia Yuknavitch, Kristen Stewart’s The Chronology of Water defies the “vanity project” stigma typically assigned to new actors-turned-directors with its intense, jarring cuts, resulting in an exceptionally uncomfortable film. While its structure is elliptical, its storytelling is precise and begins with brief, vivid flashes of a miscarriage’s blood flowing down a shower drain, accompanied by the protagonist’s agonizing cries: Yuknavitch, portrayed by English actress Imogen Poots. The narrative progresses through stream-of-consciousness vignettes with layered, whispered voice-overs, navigating through a harrowing childhood marked by abuse and an adulthood spent attempting to untangle its complexities, all while embodying the chaotic, unspoken emotional aftermath.

Premiering globally at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, this period biopic borders on the avant-garde, merging two cinema forms that are typically at odds but here create a compelling synergy. This mirrors Stewart’s own cinematic journey from a former YA sensation to an international arthouse icon, having collaborated with (and learned from) directors like Personal Shopper’s Olivier Assayas and Spencer’s Pablo Larraín. Considering Yuknavitch’s reputation as a prolific writer, the story becomes as much about its storytelling as about its narrative— a theme evident in the book but expanded in the film. Stewart uses the adaptation to reflect on her own questions of authorship within the story.

For example, Poots’s dynamic portrayal of a troubled teenager evolving into her thirties showcases a character desperate to escape her own skin, akin to a lifelong celebrity seeking to avoid the limelight. Her voice and gestures do not just mimic Yuknavitch but rather evoke a quintessential Stewart performance; the similarity is striking.

However, before these similarities comes to light, the film remains laser focused on minor details, from the five o’clock shadow of Yuknavitch’s stern, short-tempered father as he yelled at her without reason, to the way her addict mother rested her hands on the table, refusing to intervene, to her older sister’s helpless stares. We’re introduced to Yuknavitch through her childhood memories of specific moments and sensations, opening the door to Stewart and editor Olivia Neergaard-Holm’s jagged, repetitive cuts between closeups of items and body parts only half in-frame.

This framing is also key to Yuknavitch discovering her attraction to women; when the camera embodies her gaze, it does so with a sense of shameful hesitation, at least at first. But by the time she throws herself headfirst into all manner of sexual experiences, Stewart and cinematographer Corey C. Waters’s camera becomes unafraid to focus gently on physical and emotional vulnerabilities, often in the same breath.

Scene transitions are often marked by harsh flashes in the 16mm film stock, as though the end of one memory (and the beginning of the next) were defined by light leaking into celluloid at the tail end of a reel. This, paired with the constant visual presence of dirt around the edges of the un-matted frame, creates almost Brechtian texture, as though the very act of translating this story into cinematic form were part of its story. Yuknavitch, of course, is not a filmmaker, but her attempts to scribble down her thoughts and feelings in moments of dismay — with the sound of pencil on paper becoming grating, among other repetitive cues — are just as key to Stewart’s narrative as the many terrible things that happen to Yuknavitch throughout her childhood.

The Chronology of Water is as much a film about a swimmer’s sexual abuse as it is about trying to make sense of the world through art. As Yuknavitch moves through young adulthood, with an untamed aggression which she can only channel through BDSM experiences (with both men and women), and which, alongside her dependence on alcohol, torpedoes several of her romantic relationships. Whether she knows it or not, she’s more like her parents than she would like.

The film’s nervous energy makes for a visceral tumble down a rabbit hole of self-loathing. However, it also creates space for the rare moments of reprieve. By establishing its offbeat, oppressive baseline, and pummeling the viewer with its artistic flourishes to the point of excess, the movie’s calmer, more considered scenes stand out in meaningful ways. This usually happens when Yuknavitch finds herself interacting with someone who finally understands her — like her professor and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest author Ken Kesey (a warm and marvelously enticing turn by Jim Belushi).

There are a host of avant-garde filmmakers who may have influenced the movies’ restless avant-garde quality (as far back as Soviet montage maestro Dziga Vertov), and just as many modern dramatists to whom the movie’s naturalistic performances can compare (for instance, John Cassavetes or Mike Leigh). However, perhaps the most fitting point of comparison — albeit one Stewart may not have intended — is actually the “golden age of TV” series Mad Men. The two couldn’t have less in common on the surface, since the weekly Matthew Weiner drama was mostly droll and austere. However, as a show about the commercial art of advertising, as told through the eyes of a uniquely gifted character keeping secrets close to his chest, it taught its audience how to interpret its poetry by presenting the world through its protagonist’s eyes. The Chronology of Water is a similar beast, as a movie zeroed in on the fragile dynamic between trauma and creation, to the point that anguish seems to reside within its every aesthetic decision.

Through its jarring sounds, its editing rhythms, and its tortured performances, it channels the spirit of both its authors — Yuknavitch and Stewart — and conjures painful memories in vivid hues. It’s a potent, unrelenting debut that feels like being thrown into the deep end, with Stewart as a cinematic lifeguard helping us make sense of utter chaos.

Siddhant Adlakha (@SiddhantAdlakha)is a New York-based film critic and video essay writer originally from Mumbai. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and his work has appeared in the New York Times, Variety. the Guardian, and New York Magazine.