EDITOR’S NOTE: A heads up — this piece contains mild spoilers for Slanted and draws from the writer’s own experience. We believe the best conversations about film are honest ones. This is that kind of conversation.

There are films you watch, and then there are films that stay with you, quietly and uncomfortably, long after.

​

Amy Wang’s Slanted is one of those films.

​

I watched it recently, and if I’m honest, there were moments I wanted to look away. Not because it missed the mark, but because it hit it a little too precisely.  At its core, Slanted is a sharp, satirical look at beauty, belonging, and what happens when acceptance becomes conditional. It follows Joan, a young Asian woman navigating a world where proximity to Western beauty standards and societal norms start to shape how she sees herself and what she believes will make her worthy. What begins as subtle pressure builds into something much heavier, asking how far someone might go to feel like they belong.

​As a Vietnamese-American woman, I felt discomfort when I saw the trailer—a discomfort rooted in a familiar past feeling. That sense deepened throughout the film. There’s a specific kind of recognition that comes with this type of familiarity. Not loud and not always obvious, but layered and personal. The quiet comparison. The subtle recalibration of self. The nagging question—would being just a little different have made things easier? Each realization built on the last, carrying me further into the film’s emotional world.

​

And then there’s Olivia…

​

Amelie Zilber’s Olivia is a character who makes you shift in your seat with discomfort and hate. She’s polished, socially fluent, and uncomfortable to watch. She moves effortlessly through Joan’s world, embodying an ease and acceptance that soon reveal something sharper beneath.

​

She shows casual cruelty—at the nail salon, her disregard for Joan is effortless; later, at the party, her power rests on exclusion and harm.

​

They’re hard and uncomfortable moments, and they are meant to be.

For Amelie, that was the point, but also the challenge.

​

“She’s an incredibly unlikeable character, and with good reason,” she tells me. “But I can’t play Olivia if I’m judging her, or she will always feel separate from me. Nobody sees themselves as the villain of their own life, so I wanted to find her logic and her emotional core. Nobody that evil is devoid of pain, so I tried to really understand where that came from.”

​That decision to humanize rather than flatten is exactly what makes Olivia land. You don’t get the comfort of distance. She feels real in a way that is hard to dismiss, and maybe even harder to fully separate from the world the film is reflecting back to us.

What drew Amelie to the project wasn’t just the role but the precision of the storytelling itself, and the voice behind it.

​

“What drew me to Slanted was how sharp and intelligent the script was,” she says. “It uses satire in a way that’s entertaining, but it’s also incredibly precise.”

​

That clarity starts with Chinese-Australian film director Amy Wang, whose debut here feels incredibly assured.

“Amy is a star in her own right,” Amelie shares. “She is such a confident and thoughtful leader, and extremely collaborative. She has such a clear vision and distinct voice, and the movie she wrote is funny, uncomfortable, and emotionally devastating.”

​

You can feel that balance throughout the film, the ability to move between satire and something much more grounded, sometimes within the same scene.

​

“Amy understood when to lean into the satire and when to ground something,” Amelie says. “As an actor, she’s the kind of director you dream of working with.”

​And that collaboration shows. A film like Slanted could easily tip too far in one direction, but instead, it holds that tension in a way that feels intentional and controlled. For Amelie, that sense of intention aligns closely with how she has always approached storytelling.

​

“I think for me it was always tied to storytelling’s power to change people’s minds,” she explains. “Politics has been such a huge part of my life and my career, and I’ve always cared deeply about how we reach people, how we challenge their assumptions, how we make something feel human to them that maybe didn’t before.”

​

You can feel that in her choices. Acting, for her, isn’t just about performance; it’s about participating in something that has the potential to shift perspective.

​

“I’ve always been drawn to work that has something social, political, or emotional that might actually shift the way someone sees the world,” she says. “Once I understood that acting could be part of that force, it felt a lot more meaningful.”

​

And like most actors, her path wasn’t without its quieter, more uncertain moments.

​

“When I went from self-taping and hoping it would work, to actually being entrusted with meaningful material, that’s when it started to feel real,” she says. “As for pressure, self-doubt is honestly part of being an actor. You care deeply and you’re exposing a part of yourself, which is very scary. I really try to focus on not letting that insecurity drive. I always come back to the work, the only real part I can control.”

​

That grounding shows up in how she approaches representation as well, something Slanted sits firmly within.

​“Very conscious,” she says when asked about the kinds of stories she chooses. “I think audiences are incredibly perceptive, and people want stories that feel honest. I don’t think every role has to be didactic, but I do think the work should come from somewhere honest.”

​In a film like Slanted, that awareness also meant recognizing where her role fits, and where it doesn’t.

​

“I was very aware that this film’s deepest questions are rooted in an experience that is not mine,” she says. “So for me, the responsibility was to serve the story with care and to support the film’s larger conversation without overstepping it.”

​

That kind of thoughtfulness feels especially important in a story like this, because while the film centers on Joan’s very specific experience, its emotional core is something many women will recognize.

​

“The preparation was about understanding the emotional logic of Slanted’s environment,” she explains. “Most women, in one way or another, understand what it feels like to be compared or made to feel that your value is somehow tied to how much you ‘fit in.’”

​

That part, at least, felt deeply personal to me. Watching it, I wasn’t just reacting to the story; I was remembering. The insecurities I carried from childhood into my teen years, and those that followed me into my late twenties. The subtle ways I internalized a standard that was never really built with me in mind.

​

Now, at 43, and as a mother, I find myself looking at those experiences differently. There is a clarity that comes with time, but also with the responsibility to ensure my children feel proud of who they are and of their roots, especially their Vietnamese roots. I think more about what I am modeling, what I am passing down, and what it means to hold pride in my culture in a way that feels grounded and lived, not performative or conditional.

That doesn’t erase those earlier versions of myself, and in some ways, films like Slanted make them feel even closer.

​

Amelie speaks about success in a way that feels aligned with that kind of evolution.

“I think when you’re younger, success can look very external,” she says. “But as I’ve gotten more experience, it’s started to mean something deeper. It means getting to do work I’m proud of. Being challenged. Growing. Being in rooms with people I respect and feeling like I’m contributing something meaningful.”

It’s a perspective that feels grounded in longevity rather than momentary visibility, and it shows in the kinds of roles she’s drawn to.

​“I’m really drawn to complex women,” she says. “Characters who are sharp, contradictory, funny, messy, fully human. I love stories that let women be all of those things instead of just exemplary or symbolic.” That complexity is exactly what she brings to Olivia. Even in her most difficult moments, there is a clear effort not to reduce her to a one-dimensional figure.

​

“I’m proud that I trusted the character and tried not to flatten her,” she says. “I wanted her to feel like someone we’ve all had the displeasure of knowing, even in the ways she reflects something harsher about the world around her.” And maybe that is what makes Slanted land the way it does. It doesn’t isolate its characters from the world around them; instead, it asks us to consider how those characters are shaped in the first place.

​

“I hope audiences leave the film feeling entertained,” she says, “but also reflecting on what we’re taught to want, and about chasing acceptance in systems that were never built equally.”

​

“And with Olivia, I hope people see that characters like her don’t just appear out of nowhere. They’re produced by a very real culture.”

That idea stayed with me because it shifts the conversation in a way that feels more honest. It asks us not just to react, but to reflect, and maybe even to question the systems we have learned to navigate so instinctively.

​

As I think about Slanted and about Amelie’s performance within it, what stands out most is the intention behind both. There is a clear sense of purpose in the kind of work she is choosing, and in how she approaches it, with a level of care that feels thoughtful and deliberate. I appreciate that.

​

It makes me curious about what comes next for her, not just in terms of roles, but in the kinds of stories she continues to align herself with. If Slanted is any indication, she is someone who is less interested in easy narratives and more in those that ask something of us.

​

And those are always the ones worth paying attention to.

​

Watch Slanted Trailer HERE

Follow Amelie’s  IG HERE

CREDITS: Photographer : Jana Schuessler @janaschuessler | Styling: Maegan Campbell @maegancampbell
| Hair: Brandon Pietsch @bdonnn | Make up: Andi Bisbal @andimetro |Photo assistant: Danica Wade @danicawade |
Article edited by Cyan Leigh Dacasin | Graphics and Cover Designs: Kevin Conopio