Kristen Stewart’s ‘The Chronology of Water’ Wins Praise, But She’s Ready for Battle

On Saturday afternoon, when I met up with Kristen Stewart on a balcony at the Cannes Film Festival, she had a confession to make: She was midway through the happiest day of her life.

The night before, her directorial debut, “The Chronology of Water,” had made its premiere here, the culmination of a very long effort to make her first feature. “I’ve had this movie in my head for years,” she said. And after so many false starts, financing issues and radical creative re-imaginings, she could barely believe that she had pulled it off.

“I just thought it was potentially dying every day,” she said. “It was like a shipwreck, we had to put that boat back together. It was shocking.”

Adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir of the same name, “The Chronology of Water” stars Imogen Poots as a competitive swimmer struggling to outrace a traumatic childhood marked by sexual abuse. Stewart tells the story elliptically, skipping through time as her lead struggles to make sense of a difficult life and channel her pain into an affinity for writing.

The film has been well reviewed, which Stewart was pleasantly surprised by. “I’m totally willing for people to come for it,” she said. “I’m almost wanting it.” Maybe Stewart, with her avid gaze and punky ombre hair, craves that conflict because she’s used to it: “The Chronology of Water” took eight years of fighting to make. Now, she’s curious about what her career as an actress and director will look like.

“I don’t think it’ll ever be this hard, and when I say ‘hard’ I put it in air quotes because I’ve never been happier in my entire life,” she said. “But when you really care about something, the weight of dropping it every day is like you’re dropping it on your toes and screaming.”