“Ma Belle, My Beauty” or “I Was a Lesbian Polyamorist in Anduze, France”

“Homosexuality was invented by a straight world dealing with its own bisexuality,” noted the late great complexity known as Kate Millett. Clearly an epigram that Oscar Wilde, if he’d been born a century later, would have been proud of parenting.

“Homosexuality was invented by a straight world dealing with its own bisexuality.”

Director/writer Marion Hill’s debut film, Ma Belle, My Beauty, has its verbally clever moments, too. Always delightfully adult, this offering, however, doesn’t deal with labels. No one seems to really care about the gender of the soul you are shacking up with or their ethnicity or their knowledge of wine. Well, the latter might not be true. “Let’s all just be happy” might have been the theme here, except Bertie, a jazz songstress, is currently not being very cheery. . . and she’s in denial about why.

Well, let’s start at the beginning. Once upon a time in New Orleans, before the film even begins, a straight French man (Fred) was…