A good movie

Almost 20 years ago, Kristen Stewart became a teen idol with ‘Twilight’. After that, she slowly built a solid career mostly with indie features. Now, after 10 long years, she came up with her directorial debut which was definitely a labor of love. Well, in spite of its beautiful and intriguing title and poster, it turned out to be actually a pretty basic story about abuse and trauma. However, with her first directorial effort, Stewart was certainly not trying to deliver another generic drama, that’s for sure. Indeed, right from the start, the editing, the framing, the coloring, the sound, well pretty much everything was anything but straightforward and it was all handled with a very artistic approach. It was a bold move from her, considering her lack of experience, and it was maybe a bit too much artsy-fartsy. Eventually, I do believe it is an acquired taste as it might be alienating for some viewers but it did work for me though. There is also the fact that the book it was adapted from was deemed ‘unfilmable’ so, from this perspective, her surreal approach might have had then some merit but since I haven’t read the damned thing, I’m not sure about that. At least, there is no doubt that, with Imogen Poots, Stewart really struck gold though. I wonder how she chose her because Poots, just like Stewart, has always been an intriguing actress but I have never seen her delivering such a fearless and heartbreaking performance before. Eventually, she basically carried the whole thing on her shoulders and she was always quite spellbinding to behold. Even if you might have never been through such traumatic experiences, you could feel her pain and how difficult, even impossible, it was for her to move forward with her life, to genuinely connect with other people and to experience love in general. Anyway, to conclude, even if it was maybe not really groundbreaking, it was still a really solid drama and a fine first directorial effort for Kristen Stewart and it is definitely worth a look. 

7/10