Stonewalling

When the movie goes in for an infrequent closeup — a shot of ultrasound gel being smeared on Lynn’s belly or of Lynn’s face as she puts on a surgical mask in the immediate wake of the COVID-19 outbreak — the intimacy is startling, and instructive.

Few movies capture the surreal comedy and engulfing horror of the money-driven world as piercingly as “Stonewalling.”

Stonewalling is a moving slow burn of a character study, as well as an examination of female stagnancy, personally and politically. There is a striking, human sense of suspense to the film as we worry for Lynn, and root for her to find her power.

Stonewalling is an attentive, engaged character study, an uncommonly candid (for China) women’s picture, and a film of dense and considered sociopolitical implications.

Visually, emotionally, and spiritually, the film is embalmed in an antiseptic sheen. As such, despite its formal rigor and effective, economic approach to storytelling, “Stonewalling” is hard to connect with.

If it lends to creating a hazy portrait for the future of China’s youth, it also makes for a rather meandering and tepid affair. Huang and Otsuka’s form of subtlety and “facts-of-life” approach keep Stonewalling from being the incisive drama they’re clearly considering. Yet the movie gets its point across, much as you might wait for it to get there.

It’s worth checking out Stonewalling just to see a picture of China that’s not State Approved or attempted by outsiders.