Metacritic reviews

No one is more seen in The Chronology of Water than Poots, who allows herself to be consumed with the urgency and hunger of Lidia.

The Chronology of Water invites us to experience each moment as if it were happening, but the movie is really telling the story of a spirit — the one that tries to survive, and become whole, through each moment.

If there is personal expression abound in Stewart’s debut, there’s also precious little ego. Nor are the tics that too often prick or sink the work of actors feeling out what it’s like to call the shots.

The Chronology of Water can — and repeatedly does — churn itself to a forbidding standstill, and yet Poots makes every moment of it ecstatic in its immediacy.

Actors turning to directing is nothing new, but it’s unlikely you’ve seen a performer’s directorial debut as boldly confident and emotionally precise as Kristen Stewart’s The Chronology of Water.

It borders on cliche a little, but there is compassion and storytelling ambition here.

You can’t lie in a close-up, which is lucky for Stewart. Because her lead actress, on camera throughout, expresses the kind of deeply moving primal agony and preternatural resilience that never once feels false, and ultimately compensates for the ostentatious nonsense around her.

A too-close-to-the-case ardor for the material does the film a disservice, as can sometimes happen when a cherished object is adapted.

Despite an honourable commitment to exploring how severe adolescent trauma casts a long shadow over a person’s life, the film’s patina of pain eventually grows repetitive, undercutting the sensitivity Stewart and her lead bring to the proceedings.

All held together by a transcendent performance from Imogen Poots, The Chronology of Water isn’t the strongest directorial debut, but it does hold glimpses of what Stewart is capable of.