Final Rating: 4/5
From writer/director Xiaodan He, Montréal, ma belle (Montreal, My Beautiful) is a beautifully crafted love letter to following your heart and the city itself. It stars Joan Chen as Feng Xia and Charlotte Aubin as Camille, two women each looking for something more in their lives.
Feng Xia and her husband Wang Jun (John Xu) run a convenience store in the city, despite his higher education, a fate of many immigrants. She is going through menopause and at a checkup informs her doctor that sex with him is often painful as she struggles to get aroused. He prescribes a treatment, but ultimately not a solution as the problem runs much deeper. After attending a French class in an effort to learn the language so her daughter Joy (Pei Yao Xu) will no longer have to translate for her, she meets a young gay man from Cuba who has moved to Montreal to be more accepted as he is.
She is taken by his confidence and zest for life and asks him about how he meets people. It’s clear that as in her culture, these types of relationships are frowned upon, but her curiosity has obviously been long dormant given what we later learn, and she sets about trying to meet a woman.
Feng Xia sets up an online dating account and before long meets up with Camille. She is at first very shy, but eventually warms up to the notion and they start to form a bond, amidst the various obstacles this presents.
Much of the film revolves around a sense of disconnect. Feng Xia is disconnected from the language of the city, her marriage and ultimately her true self. There is also a chance she will be separated from her children as, later in the film, they consider moving back to China, though Joy would stay behind to finish her studies.
She admits to Camille that it is out of a sense of obligation that she stays in this distant marriage and that her husband wanted a son, Dong Dong (Anzhe Angelo Zhang) so that was her duty. Camille is estranged from her parents, who are now separating, after years of being stuck in the middle of their fighting, and notes that at thirty, working a day job after having left her studies in anthropology, she feels without a sense of purpose. Camille’s mother attempts to re-enter her life, asking for help in the settlement, but she has no interest in reconnecting with her daughter.
Wang Jun eventually discovers their affair, and falls into a state of anger and self-loathing. He is a man disconnected from his sense of traditional masculinity in the culture, as well as his chosen profession. He has tried for years to get back to the engineering work he did in China but given his age and lack of Canadian credentials, finds no success which only serves to decimate what little self-esteem he possessed.
Though an archetype of the traditional, conservative view of marriage, we feel his shame and pain, despite much of it being self-inflicted for being so rigid and oft cold hearted in nature, though he spares Feng Xia the humiliation of sharing her secret with the children, as per her wishes.
Camille and Feng Xia take a camping trip to Camille’s uncle’s old cottage where Feng Xia reveals a story she’d not told anyone previously about how she was in love with a girl when she was 18. Her love for this girl is symbolic not only of her desires but of the fact she has been repressed her whole life, unable to pursue her own happiness. This is why she so greatly admires Camille, as she sees her as free and brave, able to live her own life on her terms.
This is how it seems on the surface, but Camille had mentioned ‘friends with benefits’ in their first message exchange, (a topic lost on Feng Xia) symbolic of a lack of any deeper connection in her life as she initially seems content to flit from fling to fling. However, as their story unfolds, it opens her to the possibility of more.
There is a poignant scene early in their courting when the lovers are eating lunch on a park bench and opening up to one another, including revealing their real names as both used a false one on the dating site. Feng Xia notes that the meaning of her name is like a phoenix rising, and that ultimately is what her story arc sets out to be. A woman who has had her agency removed, and feels devoted to a life forced upon her, but has given that new opportunity to rise from these struggles and forge a new world for herself and her children.
The performances are strong across the board, and the well-crafted narrative is a powerful reminder of the hold culture and tradition can have on our lives if we’re not willing to live our own.
Montréal, ma belle was seen during the 2026 International Film Festival of Ottawa.
