Kristen Stewart fought for a decade to direct “The Chronology of Water.” So she's going all out for the movie's "rock show" premiere in Los Angeles.
“I’m going to wear a f------ bathing suit,” Stewart says conspiratorially on a recent Zoom call. “And then that’s it! Boom, done, move on.”
Stewart, 35, has traveled the globe promoting "The Chronology of Water" (in theaters Jan. 9) ever since it premiered at Cannes Film Festival last May. She's now finding it hard to let go.
“I’ve been fixated on this thing for so long,” says the actress, who makes her directorial debut with the expressionist drama. “This just felt like my own private thing for 10 years, so it's weird to have it traipsing around the world and living its own life. Everyone feels like a mama when they make a thing and call their movie their ‘baby.’ I know that’s a cliché, but it really feels like a first-time, fluttery mom feeling.”
Kristen Stewart shares why it was 'so hard' to make 'Chronology of Water'
“It sounds like a total platitude, but you just have to trust yourself," says Kristen Stewart, who directed and wrote her first movie "The Chronology of Water."
Based on Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir, “The Chronology of Water” follows a woman (Imogen Poots) who survives an abusive childhood with the help of competitive swimming. But her Olympic-level talents are derailed by addiction, and she eventually finds healing through writing.
Stewart read the book in 2017 and announced her intentions to direct a movie adaptation the following year. The project sat in relative limbo until 2024 as prospective producers balked at the dark subject matter and nonlinear storytelling, deeming the movie unmarketable. But Stewart, who had directed short films and music videos, was undaunted.
“I really stayed on this squirrely path,” she says. “A lot of people that I trust and love were like, ‘I don't think there’s a movie here.’ ” Ultimately, it’s about “having faith that your thought process isn't so rarefied and dumb. If it works for you, it's going to work for other people.”
"As an actress, I sometimes feel that I don't fit certain places," says Imogen Poots, who stars in Kristen Stewart's new movie. "With this, I realized that's OK."
Stewart partially credits her Princess Diana drama “Spencer,” and 2022 best actress Oscar nomination, for helping “get eyes” on the project.
“The only reason I was allowed to make this movie was because 10 different financiers were like, ‘Oh, Kristen Stewart, maybe her taste isn't s---,’” says Stewart, who had her big-screen breakthrough at age 10 in 2002’s “Panic Room.” “One thing leads to another, since I was a little kid. I'm piggybacking on every last experience I'm having all the time.”
Kristen Stewart can't shake the 'mom feeling' of making her first film
She believes that she could have directed “Chronology” when she was younger, although it would have been a “very different movie."
“I don't necessarily believe in divine timing. I think everything's taking too long,” Stewart says. “At the same time, it was so hard to make this film, and I’m genuinely proud of my body and its ability to sustain carrying this beast. I don't know if I had that when I was 26 or 28.”
Kirsten Stewart will 'keep doing it her way' as both an actress and director
"I had so many people try and tell me to clarify things," Kristen Stewart says. "What I learned was to follow your instincts."
Critics have embraced “Chronology,” which has 91% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
“People have been really nice about it,” Stewart says. “No one has slaughtered the film; I was expecting the movie to get battered.” She figured they wouldn't warm to its languid pace and surreal imagery: “I don't think people have a lot of patience for that, so I was surprised when people got it and felt passionate about it.”
Still, she gets frustrated by the patriarchal gatekeeping of women's stories; research shows female filmmakers continue to be widely underrepresented at both the box office and the Oscars. At a Hollywood women’s luncheon in November, the “Personal Shopper” star pointedly called out the “boys' club business model that pretends to want to hang out with us while … belittling our true perspectives.”
There’s a “mass gaslight that’s happening, as if it’s difficult to point at the fact that we’re not allowed to take up as much space,” Stewart says now. “Sure, a couple more ladies are allowed to make movies than they were 20 years ago, but it’s not going to change in my lifetime.”
Stewart laughs at the suggestion that if 2008’s “Twilight” had been directed by David Lynch, it would have been hailed as a strange, subversive masterpiece. Instead, the Catherine Hardwicke-helmed romance was immediately dismissed as a young-adult chick flick.
“Because teenage girls are dramatic,” Stewart deadpans. “I’m like, so is David Lynch!”
Even still, she feels encouraged by directors Lynne Ramsay and Mona Fastvold, whose new dramas are unapologetically emotional and heightened: “ ‘Die My Love’ and ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ are absolutely radical movies that, if you don’t like them – and put this in print – you hate women,” Stewart says. “They f--- with form and fixate on certain things that are not overtly plot-oriented.”
After their experience collaborating on “Chronology,” Poots is eager to see what Stewart does next.
“She's going to keep making stories that are deceptively simple, but like any great artist, she's going to Trojan horse some pretty good notions into that,” Poots says. “She’s not interested in being cool, and that’s what makes her so cool. She’s going to keep doing it her way.”
Coming up, Stewart will star as astronaut Sally Ride in the limited series "The Challenger," as well as film "The Wrong Girls," written and directed by her wife, Dylan Meyer. She has her “fingers and toes crossed” that she'll film her next project in LA later this year: a microbudget movie that she plans to make very quickly with her friends. “It’s about the industry, but very peripherally,” Stewart teases. “I can't wait, I love it so much.”
After the long gestation of “Chronology,” she wants to just let her impulses guide her.
“(John) Cassavetes got something right,” Stewart says. “Pick up a f------ camera and say something to someone!” Maybe it’ll take three weeks or three years, but “what I’ve learned is to do it right now.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
What do you think of this?