3/5 stars
Winner of the Best Narrative Feature prize at the 2023 Golden Horse Awards – which is often considered the most prestigious accolade in the Chinese language film industry- Stonewalling is a stripped-down, non-judgemental tale of a 20-year-old woman forced to make a series of difficult decisions after discovering she is pregnant.
Co-directed by Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka, it is the duo’s third film to examine the plight of young women in modern China, all of which star actress Yao Honggui as the central protagonist.
At the insistence of her ambitious boyfriend (Liu Long), Lynn (Yao) has enrolled in English classes while studying to be a flight attendant at a trade school in Changsha. She also works a number of low-paying odd jobs, sending what little money she earns back home to her parents, who are themselves stuck in a turbulent, abusive relationship.
Things get worse for Lynn’s parents after a botched operation at their clinic causes a patient to have a miscarriage and demand financial compensation. Lynn considers selling her eggs to a black market fertility clinic, only to fail the medical exam because she is newly pregnant.
Her boyfriend insists that she have an abortion, but instead Lynn moves back in with her parents, opting to carry the baby to term and hand it off to their bereaved patient.
Over the past decade, Huang has emerged as a bold and all-too-scarce female voice in China’s independent film industry, telling hard-to-swallow stories from the country’s rural provinces that paint a less-than-flattering picture of the current state of her homeland.
Huang’s films, made in collaboration with her husband Otsuka, invariably focus on marginalised female characters struggling to find a foothold in a supposedly booming economy.
The society portrayed in Stonewalling, which is set in the months directly preceding the pandemic, is one of perpetual financial struggle; a gig economy where the promise of a swift and simple windfall dangles tantalisingly just out of reach for millions of ordinary people.
Ultimately, the price of a human life in this environment is tragically low. Lynn is told repeatedly how important her health and well-being are to everyone around her, as they endlessly circle her, waiting to cash in on her unfortunate situation.
The resulting drama is not always an easy watch, and the gradual slide towards tragedy is as inevitable as it is painful to endure, but there can be no denying that Lynn’s story is all too common and one in desperate need of being acknowledged and addressed head-on.