Chinese American actress and director Joan Chen plays a married woman who moves her family to Canada for a better life, only to discover a far different life as she falls in love with another woman in the trailer for writer and director Xiaodan He’s indie drama Montréal, ma belle (Montreal, My Beautiful).
Chen learned to speak French to play Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese mother who over a summer in Montreal falls in love with Camille (Charlotte Aubin), a young Quebecois woman she discovers on a dating site. And that awakens a long-buried sexual desire from her youth.
The result after the two women come together is Xia having to choose between a life of stoic duty to her family and a long overdue lesbian affair. Along the way, Xia must deal with her husband questioning her commitment to their marriage and sorting out whether she’s just a friend or a lover with Camille.
“In life, you must accept that some things have no answers or justice,” Xia tells one her daughters at one point in the trailer as she sorts through conflicting emotions. “You don’t have to lie to me. I understand you’re afraid! You’re afraid of the truth, about yourself. Because you’re ashamed,” Camille tells a frightened Xia during a sidewall encounter in the teaser.
The 63-year-old Chen was a child star in China in the 1970s, before her breakout role in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning The Last Emperor in 1987. After moving to the U.S., Chen built a Hollywood career with roles in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks series and Oliver Stone’s Heaven and Earth drama.
As a director herself, Chen won acclaim for the China-set drama Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl in 1998, and she gained recent attention for her role in Sean Wang’s feature directorial debut and coming-of-age tale Didi, which bowed at Sundance in Jan. 2024. That followed movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Crazy Rich Asians marking a shift in available Asian character roles, which brought Chen to Canada for a lead role in director He’s lesbian drama.
The Montreal-based Chinese Canadian filmmaker studied at the Beijing Film Academy of China before emigrating to Canada in 2002. “The story at the heart of Montreal, My Beautiful is one about the quiet revolutions that happen within us. Joan Chen brings such depth, grace, and truth to Feng Xia, and audiences across Canada are going to feel every heartbeat of this film,” He said in a statement about her drama about sexual identity and freedom ahead of a Feb. 13 Canadian theatrical release.
The French- and English-language drama also stars John Xu, Pei Yao Xu, Anzhe Zhang, Little Nell and Jean-Guy Bouchard. Christine Falco of Les Films Camera Oscura produced Montreal, My Beautiful, which is being shopped to worldwide buyers by Filmoption International.
