Set in rural Hunan province in the village in which Huang Ji grew up, and based on
incidents in her own life, Egg and Stone is a powerful portrait of 14-year-old Honggui’s
attempts to grapple with her emerging sexual maturity.
Since her parents moved
to the city to work, she has been forced to live with her uncle and aunt for seven years:
this kind of temporary abandonment of children to rural relatives is a frequent phenomenon
of China’s rural to urban migration boom. Her aunt considers her a burden;
though her uncle seems solicitous.
A local boy with whom she exchanges eggs for
a sculpted stone seems to show interest, but Honggui is alone with her own inchoate
fears and desires, grappling with a terrifying world of sexual awakening and danger.
Huang Ji’s visual sophistication and narrative fluency belie her youth: she stands out
from the current crop of new Chinese independent filmmakers with her technical
polish and narrative assurance.
All the film’s actors are non-professionals: Yang Honggui
in particular is remarkable as Honggui, incarnating a stubborn power, fear, vulnerability,
and resistance all in one.
Cinematographer Otsuka Ryuji (also the film’s
producer and editor) contributes beautifully crafted cinematic images, fearfully intimate,
softly pulsing with light, saturated with complex emotional power.