Shot entirely on iPhone, The Wolf maintains a natural, observational feel, capturing intimate moments so easily that you forget the camera is there until it’s addressed. The mix of these scenes with talking heads paints a picture of Yuan’s life both as it appears and how it truly is.
Produced by renowned Bollywood director Kabir Khan (Beyond the Himalayas (1995), New York (2009), and directed by filmmaking duo Wancheng Gu and Prasad Shetty, The Wolf brings a cross-cultural understanding to one woman’s story. Navigating relationships, duty, and economic change, this film is an observational meditation on queer love and life in contemporary China.
Yuan, ‘The Wolf’, a former mayor and business owner living in Shanghai, has spent her life negotiating the demands of Chinese society and her own identity. As she approaches her 60th birthday, the documentary follows her efforts to navigate the future with her younger girlfriend and the husband she remains married to. But as China’s economic downturn threatens her livelihood and her partner pursues motherhood, the film questions the emotional cost of loving, ageing and compromising in a life of complicated authenticity.
After an opening scene of Yuan, her friends and her girlfriend Zhen Zhen joyfully singing at a karaoke bar, we’re met with the chaos of her daughter’s wedding, and the complex dynamics of Yuan’s situation are shown. With her partner and husband meeting for the first time, and the sight of Yuan dressed much more feminine than we’ve seen her present in the previous scene, this wedding reflects the crux of the film: the tensions between personal truth and social expectation.
Shot entirely on iPhone, The Wolf maintains a natural, observational feel, capturing intimate moments so easily that you forget the camera is there until it’s addressed. The mix of these scenes with talking heads paints a picture of Yuan’s life both as it appears and how it truly is. The poignancy of this method is especially evident in scenes between her elderly mother and an upbeat Zhen Zhen, which portray a harmony that’s stripped away when Yuan tells the camera that her parents have no idea about their relationship. To them, Yuan is still with her husband and Zhen Zhen is just a young friend that they refer to as ‘Little daughter’. This contrast between sweet, harmonious scenes and the complex reality is precisely the tonal whiplash that Wancheng and Prasad focus on: a façade carefully maintained against the competing demands of family, tradition, and personal freedom.
The film covers different elements of Yuan’s life: her friendships, her work, and her late-life journey towards embracing her sexuality, creating a portrait of a woman we feel we know. Through her relationships with her accepting husband, Zhen Zhen, and her close friends, we come to understand the many facets of Yuan’s personality and self-expression over the course of the film’s 89 minutes.
One glimpse into the battle Yuan has faced comes when her younger partner encounters the same pressures. At 31, Zhen Zhen leaves to pursue fertility treatment back in Shanxi with her estranged husband, caught between her own desires and the expectations of motherhood imposed by family and tradition. This turn of events, which threatens to fracture her relationship, gives an important insight that the same pressures shaping women’s choices and same-sex relationships have endured since Yuan’s youth, despite China’s changing views on homosexuality.
Sometimes the film lacks momentum when it comes to portraying a personal story that is still unfolding. Its direction can feel uncertain, drifting between intimate observations and scenes that hinder the emotional throughline. Ultimately, this is the challenge of unpredictability in an observational documentary, especially when following a subject through a milestone rather than a period of larger transition or a clearly defined narrative arc. Despite its faults, it weaves together Yuan’s life at 60, complicated by the world around her.
Wancheng and Prasad position The Wolf as an insight into a social culture of polite façades; the tension between private truth and public harmony that Yuan grapples with. Through an intimate, observational lens, they succeed in revealing the emotional weight of unspoken struggles and the compromises required to maintain a sense of belonging, while picturing the resilience of those like her who seek freedom within these constraints.
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