‘Ma Belle, My Beauty’ Is A Sunny Tale Of Love, Heartache, And Polyamory [Sundance Review]

Marion Hill’s “Ma Belle, My Beauty” opens with the kind of aural ecstasy you’d expect from a romantic drama set in the South of France: a lazily looping guitar accompanying a breathy, enchanting vocal. The scene is set – and then it immediately collapses, as the vocalist tells her accompanist,  “I hate this song, I’m sorry,” and escapes their rehearsal to take a bath.

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That opening implosion is a pretty apt encapsulation of Hill’s feature debut, which is filled with picturesque images, rolling landscapes, and shiny surfaces, yet constantly reminds us of the disappointments and unhappiness lurking beneath them. The opening also establishes, from the jump, the tension that’s become unavoidable for Bertie (Idella Johnson) and Fred (Lucien Guignard), who are not only bandmates, but husband and wife. And, well, there’s a story there.

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It comes out, in dribs and drabs, after the arrival – instigated by Fred, but a surprise to Bertie – of Lane (Hannah Pepper-Cunningham). There’s a thick, palpable awkwardness between the two women, the kind that only exists between former lovers, and soon enough, Hill fills in the blanks: Fred and Bertie haven’t seen Lane in two years, but before that, the three of them lived together in New Orleans, in a polyamorous relationship. Things didn’t work out like everyone thought they would. They seldom do.

The specifics of these three people and their shared past (and the delicacy with which those details are revealed) provide most of the interest and suspense of “Ma Belle, My Beauty”; there’s not much in the way of what we think of as “plot,” beyond the arrival of Lane and the waves it causes. And more ripples arrive in the form of Noa (Sivan Noam Shimon), a younger woman who appears at a party and takes a fancy to Lane, who obviously doesn’t mind a bit of companionship and attention at this rather strained moment in her life. 

Hill has genuine fun with this section, brutally intercutting Lane and Noa going at each other hungrily in one room with Bertie and Fred reading in bed, the picture of dull married chastity, in the next. The breakfast table scene that follows is excellent cringe comedy, without undercutting the psychological nastiness of what’s happening here: a sense sexual gamesmanship, pushing buttons, provoking former partners. It’s not about the sex, anyway; Lane and Bertie (and, to a lesser extent, Fred) are just circling the emotional pain that’s still stabbing at all of them, even after all this time.

And that’s probably her most striking gift, as a screenwriter and director – how keenly she captures the history these people share, both in what they say (there’s a certain way you talk to people you’ve been through the wringer with), and what they don’t. These wounds never really heal; you just stop thinking about them, and when someone reappears, it can all open right back up. Hill gets that, and writes her characters in a way that allows her actors to access it, so they all have little, offhand moments that break your heart, if you’ve lived a bit of life yourself. And the payoffs, the moments of eroticism, are both genuine and earned, rooted in real intimacy. The sex in the picture is explicit, yes, but not exploitative. The tricky verbal interactions are, above all else, an exploration of the characters’ complicated, shared past; the bedroom scenes pick up where those conversations leave off.

All of which makes “Ma Belle, My Beauty” sound like a bit more work than it is. In fact, it’s a deeply pleasurable experience, filled with luminous music and gorgeous views of the French countryside and beautiful people drinking wine in the sun and frolicking in forgotten ponds. It’s all so breezy and light that you just want to join them and hang out for a while, even with all the drama they’ve got brewing. [A-] 

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