NYFF60: ‘Stonewalling’ Quick Movie Review

Stonewalling (2022)
Running time: 2 h 28 m
Category: Drama

The New York Film Festival celebrates its 60th year of sharing compelling stories with film lovers and critics in the Big Apple with the festival running from September 30 – October 16. I was honored to gain access to the festival this year and attended a few press screenings; “Stonewalling” was one of those screenings.

Wife-and-husband creative team Huang Ji and Ryûji Otsuka directed the Mandarian film “Stonewalling” which stars Honggui Yao as Lynn. “When Lynn discovers that she is pregnant, finishing her studies as a flight attendant are in doubt, not wanting to have an abortion and hide her pregnancy from her absent boyfriend, Lynn hopes to give the child away at birth,” reads the official synopsis for the film. I didn’t know anything about this film going into it, but I will note this is a foreign film with English subtitles.

By definition stonewalling means “delay or block (a request, process, or person) by refusing to answer questions or by giving evasive replies, especially in politics.” This specific definition doesn’t directly align with the themes in the film to me, but they are adjacent. In “Stonewalling,” Lynn is 20 years old and agrees to trade her child to pay off family debts. Which is a win-win for Lynn. She’ll get to return to a life of normalcy upon giving birth and her parents will be amended for a mistake they made in their clinic. Cinematically this film had interesting shots that made the film lovely to look at, but the story was overall slow and drawn out. No major plot moved the story forward. I kept waiting for something to happen and then it just didn’t. Honggui Yao gave a convincing performance as a young woman faced with the difficult choice of having an unplanned pregnancy. The delivery scene in particular was compelling to watch, but the film as a whole just wasn’t my type of film.

“Stonewalling” releases on October 10, 2022.

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Photo: FLC Press