There is a confusing dichotomy in the first writer-director completed by Kristen Stewart - between the fantastic haze and the fragments of memory and the original wounds of trauma, which is always with you. Adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch's influential memoir of 2011, The age of water It is challenging material, a firm narrative of child sexual abuse that has since disappeared for years - addiction, sexual experimentation and self-destruction, and the author then discovers his voice by directing pain to writing.

Stewart also seems to find her voice, announcing the seriousness of her intentions not the self-importance of self-importance, but the impossibility of a commitment to a story commemorating her subject.

That theme played by Imogen Pots, Lidia plays in bold high-line behaviors, not only represents her and her living sister, Thora Birch, but countless women suffer silence or damage for physical violations. This is a visceral, densely textured film, shot on 16mm and washed with disorienting colors, the lenses and lights emit lights and lights that emit lights.

As the title suggests, it can be cut even when washing you with a soothing water image. Lidia ended up saying, “Come in. The water will catch you.

Distribute the fair, build shots and specific time metrics, and shoot most movies in close-ups, Stewart shapes The age of water It turns into a clumsy collage, almost like a picture pasted into a diary. The narrative is ragged and nonlinear, but somehow edited as a stream of consciousness poetry in amid Olivia Neergaard-Holm's tension. Stewart and Pots bring us to the melting core of Lidia's experience, forcing us (not manipulation) to know her pain.

Although the method is completely different, it reminds me more than once of Su Friedrich's Landmark 1990 Experimental Memoir Movie Sink or swimwhich reflects a more independent, but equally personal way of being a young girl growing up and her experience of emotional and physical abuse due to her detached, unbearable father.

Lidia's father, Mike (Michael Epp), is the kind of determined, handsome man who looks like he's just coming out of the Brylcreem commercial. But his cruelty was full when he sat down to read her college admissions and refused a half or three-quarters scholarship offer, almost delighted by her failure to secure a full ride. "If they don't want you, you don't belong there," he sneered.

Stewart showed wise judgment and maturity in portraying his abuse, making sexual violence almost entirely out of the camera. But it's shocking, though.

In one scene, the family drives to the woods to cut down a Christmas tree. Young Lydia (Anna Wittowsky) waits in the car with her mother Dorothy (Susannah Flood), even when she is present and perfects the invisible art. Mike instructs teenage Claudia (Marlena Sniega to grab the saw and go with him. They returned to the car silently, without a tree, and even with the blur of the child, Lidia seemed to be intuitive from her sister's eyes and from her expression of death.

When Mike was older, Mike warned Lidia about the disgusting things college boys wanted to do to her. Corey C. Waters' camera stayed on Lidia throughout the conversation, keeping Mike out of the frame. But the words and voices we hear clearly show that he was touching her inappropriately, probably what he said was the imagined college boys would do, but in the case of Mike, he had the right to act.

Stewart makes extensive use of voiceover narratives that cover the literary roots of the film while also giving the film a first-person immediacy. Lidia's words guide us from the childhood of San Francisco's competitive swimming in the 1970s. The death of her Olympic dream when drugs and alcohol disengage her from the program. Her college years of sexual oversex, flipped between men and women, slipped from the flasks with vodka, always with her and stabbed endless blows.

"My own drugs. My own sex. My own friends. My own freedom." She interjected like a spell, trying to convince herself that she was the key to moving forward.

Long after Lidia's craze in swimming career, the water still remains inextricably linked with her. But it also provides the means by which she can release any changed state of her at any given moment, i.e. forgetting, erasing, redemption or a sense of self that remains elusive.

"In the water, just like in a book, you can leave life." Later, when she published her first stories and won Poets and Writers Magazineshe was invited to public reading. Her selection of works began with the starter call of a competition: "Swimmer, your mark." She went on to describe the desire to come out of chlorinated water, like an amphibious thing, without gender. But her insignificant self-confidence shakes her, unable to absorb praise from organizers or listeners, or reacts to publishers’ interest in seeing more work.

Her relationship ranges from sad to poisonous. She still tries to close the voice of her father's voice, she allows herself to be fascinated by the soft, guitar folklore Philip, Earl Cave, son of musician Nick Cave, and admits that she treats him badly and hopes she will go back and apologize. Her sweetness makes her sweetness and refusal to respond to her mean and firm encouragement, which makes her proud of her tiniest victory in recovery.

Even with the rise of Phillip's kindness, she asked him to marry her, and they married her at a sweet and stupid ceremony on the beach. But when she became pregnant, she went to Claudia to stay, and the two sisters still carry the dead of their childhood legacy. The tragedy caused by pregnancy causes Phillip to return to the same beach, in an interesting scene, from awkward to exhaustion.

After Phillip, Lidia, contrary to Tom Sturridge's Devin, is a arrogant fuckboy who takes her into heavier drug use and slams her against the wall of sex, seems more punishment than the pleasurable person, which maybe she thinks she needs. Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon's relationship with the photographer made her taste BDSM, with her arms tied to the torso while she stretched out her footsteps with the paddle.

No matter how messy Lidia gets, writing is still her life raft. A friend attended a creative writing workshop in Oregon with her A nest that flies over a cuckoo Author Ken Kesey. Jim Belushi plays the cluttered sour head, and Jim Belushi's play is adorable and his tricky charm makes the movie popular. The group worked with Kesey to produce his collaborative novel caveHe soon discovered Lidia's talent, and his guidance helped her move in the right direction.

But this is when she begins to teach a writing class of hope and purpose and some stability.

Not surprisingly, Stewart gets a great job from her cast, even those who only appear in a few clips. With the most fully developed secondary roles and the most screening time, Cave is sensitive to the childish young man who believes he can solve a broken person.

Birch also had strong moments, when she left a few years ago, she misplaced guilt on her face to save herself and give up Lidia to her father. Invite Lidia into her home and take care of her during her pregnancy, just like the way her sister atones for her sins.

But pots are the deformation fulcrum of the entire cloud, the entire cloud, but still clear eyes of the movie spin. Her ugly experiences have taken away bones in the middle and after a few years, emotionally naked, and unable to even seek or receive help. For the longest time, she seemed to believe that she was a blank, and that the equipment could only be the girl she had damaged in her childhood. This is an amazing performance.

Between the Cannes schedule and the first show details of the premiere, the film’s play time stretched for nearly 40 minutes, and it must be said that its sheer intensity often becomes exhausted to the point where you want to know who its audience would be. Further patching will help and look given as it is driven directly from the lab to Cannes. But no matter what its future is, it is obvious that Stewart has completely made the film she wants to make, establishing an inner connection with her subject and never letting go.