Life is full of surprises, although sometimes people live long enough to be ready for when those surprises come. Lynn (Yao Honggui) studies flight attendant but she is bombing at least one of her courses. This part is where preparation comes in handy, or maybe they’re just resources on the ready whenever someone is. Her boyfriend, richer than she is, gets her pregnant. She doesn’t want the baby and to marry him but she doesn’t want to get rid of it neither. The film then explores the adoption and surrogate mother system in China, where she can sell her baby to rich people who are ‘discerning’ when it comes to picking aspiring babies. She is presumably Han but she also works with pregnant Uigyhur women.
Stonewalling tells that story with a few other interchangeable threads. One of these include Lynn staying with her mother (Huang Xiaoxiong) who gives her medical tips since the latter is, after all, a medical products saleswoman. Her mother’s business, by the way, isn’t going well because of a scandal and both women deal with that scandal by, um, sightseeing? The film is a few minutes short of two and a half hours. Some of its images are stark while others are beautiful, but sometimes, those images, like the plot, come few and far between. Despite that, the film comes out of its pacing issues because it justifies something that some people do. Sometimes, the best way to deal with changes is to do nothing.
- Release Date: 9/12/2022
