The Chronology of Water
This is almost an epic movie for first time director Kristen Stewart, following large parts of the life of some pitiful girl, as she turns into a fully grown woman, with some setbacks.
It’s wet all around, not just large bodies of water, but also gushing out of bodies. A big WAP is an important plot point, but there’s no teasing or playfulness, it’s almost exclusively deep suffering or hurtful memories.
The lead is visually compared to Joan of Arc, but with more suffering: her father rapes her and her older sister, while her mother fills her days with alcoholic stupor. Her sister runs away, while she swims harder and harder. Scholarship opportunities are vetoed by the father, but higher learning remains a purpose.
Her massive freedom leads to excesses from her part, which means flunking out of her scholarship, and switching to writing. The most excessive action is having a baby with some dude she met while he strummed his lute on campus.
That child was wanted, but her body is not able for now, it’s a stillborn. Her child will have to wait. The abusive father gets sick one day, and forgot some of the memories of him being absolute tyrant, he concludes nothing. But our protagonist keeps that memory alive, forgiving without forgetting.
Imogen Poots can carry one of these films easy, no problem whatsoever. Jim Belushi playing an ageing hippie teacher is crazy casting.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.