Count Kristen Stewart among those shocked by the grim statistics around female directors in Hollywood, almost a decade after #MeToo. During my conversation with Stewart on this week’s Rushfield Lunch, the Oscar-nominated actress said she found the fact that only four of this year’s top 100 movies at the North American box office were directed by women to be “ridiculous.” (A reference point she picked up from my column the day before.)
“We feel good about these brownie points that we’ve earned, that we’ve moved the needle forward a little bit on just opening up that perspective and the room in which we’re allowed to take up as female artists,” Kristen told me. “But at the same time. It’s just a crock of shit.”
It was an apt week to talk with Stewart, now a burgeoning director thanks to her upcoming film, The Chronology of Water. I can’t think of a feature directorial debut by an actor that is so sort of cinematically accomplished, that is such a pure piece of filmmaking. Based on the memoir of the same name by Lidia Yuknavitch, the movie stars Imogen Poots as Lidia, who was abused as a child by her father and turned to swimming and writing to process the trauma as she grew up. It’s a powerful movie that has stuck with me, and should be at the top of your list when it arrives in limited release in December courtesy of The Forge.
“A foundational element of female experiences is that you are possessed by the things that love you and that can turn quite sordid,” Kristen told me. “So the audacity of how selfish for you to want a self, that permeates a young woman’s experience — and sometimes in relation not just to the patriarchy, but to literally their father. It’s built into the animals that we are, and watching Lidia repossess her dignity and volition through taboo and destigmatization (is powerful) — because it’s not like she runs away from the things that have happened to her; she fully steps into them. The movie deals with some pretty hard experiences and subjects.”
It’s a great conversation — and I don’t just say that because my piece this week found its way into Kristen’s “algorithm” (her word). Watch it above and seek out The Chronology of Water.
