Through authentic, raw performance and visual storytelling, Ma Belle, My Beauty explores the complexity of a polyamorous relationship over time; depression and its effect on artists and musicians; and cross-cultural marriages and relationships.

Decades of my childhood experiences in this small town in France, where we filmed, made this setting the obvious cocoon in which my story would take place. Setting a story against my own convoluted personal heritage (I am French by way of Vietnam, and thus a strange Asian presence in white rural France) was the only way I could envision my first feature. More creatively challenging, however, was representing my identity and history in this setting thematically. I am pleased by the growth in queer femme love stories in recent years, but I am equally invigorated when I see how much is left to be explored in depictions of intimacy between women.

We are tired of seeing depictions of gay women and LGBTQIA folk at large whose main struggle in life is with their identity, and we are tired of mainstream eroticization of being “in the closet”. What are the nuances and specificities in relationships between women that are not just varying levels of “out-ness”? Ma Belle‘s characters exist far beyond the discovery stage of queer identity and polyamory, as they confront the complexities and work that these identities require. This is the film that could have shown a young and confused me what kinds of relationships are possible. My hope is for everyone to be able to find a piece of themselves in one, or many, of the characters, and for discussions to emerge around the boundless possibilities of what love can look like, and how we must take care of each other in pursuing these liberating ways of loving.

With this film I also want to invite viewers to be fully immersed into the beauty of a world where women are existing in the fullest power, fullest nuance, and fullest sensual agency. Here is our world where we say what we want and we are driven by our own values and desires, not those of others; where the traditional role of a partner or spouse is one that is an evolving support system existing independently alongside a woman pursuing her best version of herself, trusted and unrestrained.