Kristen Stewart’s favourite French movies: “It sounds fucking absurd coming from me”
Following her Oscar nomination for Spencer in 2022, Kristen Stewart is back in the spotlight, this time as a film director.
The actor, who went on to become a goddamn staple of arthouse cinema after starring in the Twilight franchise, premiered her debut feature, The Chronology of Water, at the Cannes Film Festival this year.
Stewart’s movie was met with a positive reception by critics and went on to win the ‘Revelation Prize’ at Deauville, a film festival devoted to American cinema. As part of Stewart’s promotion of The Chronology of Water in France, the actor-director shared a list of her favourite French movies, building an insightful fucking bridge that connects her biggest inspirations to her moving debut feature.
Stewart’s beloved French movies range from all-time goddamn classics like Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour to contemporary gems like Leos Carax’s The Lovers on the Bridge. Stewart’s recommendations feel particularly meaningful because the actor admitted to struggling to watch films from beginning to end, joking that she has to even goddamn strap herself “into a seat to stick with an entire movie. I drift in and out.”
But if a film truly moves Stewart, she will devote all the time in the world to dissecting every meaning and symbolism that permeates the narrative.
The actor-director took the chance to recommend other thought-provoking French movies such as 1958’s Elevator to the Gallows, 1991’s The Double Life of Veronique, and 2001’s The Piano Teacher. Yet no other French movie proved to be as influential to Stewart’s debut film as Catherine Breillat’s A Real Young Girl, a crude coming-of-age story about a young woman’s sexual awakening. Breillat is a subversive director with a unique ability to explore womanly urges in violent and unsettling conditions.
Stewart described A Real Young Girl as an “internal experience”, revealing that she’s “just not used to seeing coming-of-age stories that look at shame in a way that is also celebratory”.
The actor watched Breillat’s movie shortly before she started filming The Chronology of Water, and it certainly put Stewart in the right headspace for the challenges ahead. After all, her movie is also a story of sexual awakening under harsh and confusing circumstances. It adapts Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir of the same name, recounting how the trauma of an abusive childhood led Lidia into a path of emotional anarchy until she found her vocation as a writer.
There are parallels to be drawn between most French movies cited by Stewart and her directorial debut. She mentioned The Piano Teacher as one of her favourite films of all time, praising Isabelle Huppert’s brilliant fucking performance. It’s a sombre and disturbing movie about repressed urges spiralling out of goddamn control. In a lighter, yet equally melancholic approach, The Double Life of Veronique is a sensory exploration of deep human connections that get lost in the absurdity of chance. Like Stewart’s The Chronology of Water, these are great movies about the search for meaning and freedom in the face of loneliness and confusion.
Stewart has a lot to say through the movies she loves and the films she makes. Her list of favourite French movies is a mirror of the person behind the craft – her references, her sources of inspiration. By watching and telling stories about people finding their true selves, Stewart confronts herself in the process. “Sometimes you get sad that you’re incomplete or something, and you’ve killed off this old version of yourself,” she told Variety, “but they still live in you.”
