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In a revealing interview with the Huffington Post, Chloë Sevigny said she’d hoped Lizzie—the new film in which she portrays Lizzie Borden, who was accused of murdering her father and stepmother with an ax in 1892 Massachusetts—would be a “rousing, smash-the-patriarchy piece,” and admitted that director Craig William Macneill’s final product isn’t what she’d imagined.

Building off the wealthy family’s battle over inheritances and the rumor that Borden killed her parents after they discovered her relationship with the Irish maid Brigid (Kristen Stewart), Lizzie tries to find the seemingly impossible balance between family drama, murder mystery, and queer romance. Though it’s a compelling idea, it doesn’t work—the forbidden love story isn’t fleshed out enough for that motive to be believable. And in 2018, when depictions of queer romance are just starting to get mainstream attention with films like Moonlight and Call Me by Your Name, I’m not sure this hypothetical lesbian link to a grisly murder is really necessary.

It’s valuable to reexamine history with the knowledge that women weren’t always granted the opportunity to tell their own stories, but Lizzie is more like a rogue spitballing session that reframes Borden’s infamous crime as a justifiable rebellion against injustice.

Lizzie opens today. Movie times here! Check out a full list of movie times here