Montreal, My Beautiful (Montréal, ma belle)

😁 Montreal, My Beautiful (Montréal, ma belle), dir. Xiaodan He, 2025, Canada, 118 min., in French and Mandarin with subtitles
🌊 West Coast premiere
Thursday, June 25, 2026, 5:30 PM, Vogue Theatre

Montreal, My Beautiful ©FilmOption

Frameline blurb: San Francisco’s own Joan Chen (Saving Face, Dìdi, Twin Peaks) delivers a powerful, award-winning performance in this romantic drama about a woman exploring her queer desire later in life. A dedicated mother, wife, and anchor in her community of Chinese ex-pats, Feng Xia (Chen) seems to have built the perfect life — though it has come at her own expense. That all changes when she meets Camille, a free-spirited, younger Québécoise woman played by a charming Charlotte Aubin.

No longer willing to suppress her identity for the sake of those around her, Feng Xia allows herself to explore her sexuality for the first time. And as her newfound relationship threatens to both enrich and unravel her life, Feng Xia grapples with the terrifying-yet-beautiful freedom of finally putting herself before others. An incredible showcase for Chen, Xiaodan He’s sophomore feature infuses slow-burn sapphic yearning with a nuanced and necessary coming-of-age-at-any-age story.

My take: Feng Xia feels utterly trapped in her life, with a husband she no longer loves (if she ever really did). Camille offers a window, and perhaps a doorway, to a radically different life, but it’s never quite that easy. Feng Xia (I’m not sure which is the family name) has two children, a teenaged daughter and a younger son, and of course her husband won’t let go easily, plus there is the question of Feng Xia’s standing in the local Chinese community. We do feel for her husband a bit, particularly his frustration that his Chinese professional credentials are useless in Canada, especially since he looks to be probably in his 50s, but the husband is definitely not a sympathetic figure.

We take the journey with Feng Xia as she agonizes over the existential conflict between her long-repressed desires and her sense of duty. Will she be able to break free? At 118 minutes, it takes a while to settle the question, but it’s a journey worth taking, with plenty of drama, some moments of humor, and some steamy romance for the sapphics in the audience. Highly recommended.

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