There’s a beguiling dichotomy in Kristen Stewart’s accomplished first feature as writer-director — between the dreamlike haze and fragmentation of memory and the raw wound of trauma so vivid it will always be with you. Adapted from the influential 2011 memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water is challenging material, an unflinching account of childhood sexual abuse followed by years of vanishing — into addiction, sexual experimentation and self-destruction before the author found her voice by channeling her pain into writing.
