Ma Belle, My Beauty movie review (2021)

Hill's script is refreshing in that polyamory is not treated in a titillating or salacious way. It's not even dwelled on all that much. "Our ex has come to visit us," Fred tells a friend. It's just how this relationship formed, and that's that. At the same time, it's not altogether clear how these three specific people were connected in the first place. How do those personalities interact to form a whole? Lane says at one point that she never slept with Fred, so Bertie seems to be the draw for both of them. She was the apex of the triangle. One can understand that, considering Johnson's charisma. What is not as clear is what Bertie sees in either of them. Granted, "Ma Belle, My Beauty" takes place in the aftermath, but there isn't really a sense of what drew them all together, how they gelled as a threesome. A tactile sex scene late in the game, or a slo-mo scene of the three of them walking to a party and laughing, does not fill in those blanks.

One of the best things about first features is discovering new talent, and the actors here are all new to me, and excellent, particularly Johnson and Shimon. Bertie is a woman weighted down by many things, and you can see it in Johnson's posture, the way she walks, the way she withholds. She also has a way of taking in the room, of seeing what is really going on, but also not knowing how to handle any of it. When she sings, she throws off all constraints. But she's hurt, she's in pain. In her mind, Lane abandoned her. (Why Lane "left" is never made clear, and it's a blank the script should have addressed. As it is, Lane is basically an emotional state—expressed through agonizingly intense longing glances—rather than a character).

During a difficult conversation near the very end of the movie, Bertie says to Lane, "I don't care. I don't have the space to care." Having seen what we've seen over the course of the film, her words make sense. Everyone wants something of Bertie. Everyone wants her to be different, grow in a different way, do things they think she should do: go on tour, go to rehearsals, commit to singing, start up the thing again with Lane. She's tired of all of it. But being tired of something, and "not having the space to care" is not dramatic. "Ma Belle, My Beauty" obviously cares about its subject, and treats it with respect. But the atmosphere established doesn't leave enough room for real conflict or even expression. There's only so much a longing glance can say.

Now playing in select theaters.