“What do you know about pain, Lidia?,” a photographer and B.D.S.M. practitioner (played by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth) asks the tightly-bound young woman kneeling in front of her. Lidia, as it happens, knows quite a lot about pain, as “The Chronology of Water” has already made abundantly clear. So much so, in fact, that only Imogen Poots’s fantastically expressive performance as the adult Lidia transforms this movie (the feature directing debut of Kristen Stewart) from punishing to mesmerizing.
Adapting Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir of the same name, Stewart, after a distractingly arty opening, settles down quickly into a style that’s unconventional and borderline experimental, yet well-suited to her material. Shaping shards of Lidia’s memories into a hazy, nonlinear collage of damage (this isn’t nearly as disorienting as it sounds), Stewart lays out the extended sexual and psychological abuse suffered by Lidia and her sister, Claudia (played as an adult by Thora Birch), at the hands of their monstrous father (Michael Epp). A loving but ineffectual mother (Susannah Flood) sidles silently past these horrors, seemingly incapable of protecting her children.
A talent for competitive swimming would free Lidia to attend college, only to have her Olympics dream destroyed by her relentless pursuit of sex, drugs and alcohol. Excoriating those who dared to care for her — like a sweet singer-songwriter (Earl Cave, looking astonishingly like his father, the musician Nick Cave) — she finally finds salvation of sorts in a creative-writing class under the tutelage of Ken Kesey (a puckish Jim Belushi).
Despite some clichéd visual choices, “The Chronology of Water” is often quite lovely, the 16-millimeter photography (by Corey C. Waters) and piercing close-ups thrusting us inside Lidia’s agony. This isn’t always a comfortable place to be; and whether you emerge rewarded or drained may depend, at least in part, on the baggage you bring with you.
The Chronology of Water Not rated. Running time 2 hours 8 minutes. In theaters.
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