Taking place on the 19th-century, Northeast frontier, Bleecker Street's latest queer period drama The World to Come tells the story of a farmer's wife named Abigail (Katherine Waterston) and a brief-but-whirlwind romance between her and her fellow townswoman Tallie (Vanesssa Kirby).
Film critic and PRIDE contributor Valerie Complex sat down with the film's two leads — Pieces of a Woman star Vanessa Kirby and Fantastic Beasts' Katherine Waterston — to talk about getting to put queer women's complex emotional journeys on display, especially during a time when women couldn't be more than mothers to their families and wives to their husbands.
"There's a line where my character describes herself as a pot-bound root, all turned in on herself," Waterston explains. "The big shift that happens of course in the film is that somebody shows up who embraces her, recognizes her for the first time in her life. She feels seen and understood. And it's sort of in a way is illustrated in the film after I find out my love is requited and I lie back with my arms outstretched. It's like the pot-bound root gets to finally stretch out, that this sort of manhandling, quite literally, as you would be if you were a plant, put in a pot, she's able to break free from the constraints of her society, her lot in life, if only briefly, because of this love."
She continued:
"Without a doubt, the journey is from feeling completely imprisoned in her own grief, in her own struggles, and her own limitations to be who she longs to be. And then this love that liberates, there's a lot to be learned from that. I think it's influenced me in all sorts of ways."
"I think (Tallie's) emotional journey as somebody that has probably grown up always believing that there might be something more out there, and she doesn't know what it is, but there's this like whisper inside of herself, there's this little flame inside that wants to burn," Kirby adds. "I think in meeting someone, finding this energy that suddenly feels home, or it feels like it's her. It makes her feel more alive than she ever has in her life. And I think it's almost the confirmation of that being true, daring to dream or hoping to. And I think of so many women in those days that must've thought that."
The World to Comeis in theaters now, and will be availably digitally on-demand on March 2!
