“…By putting a queer protagonist at the heart of our revenge story, we aimed to put our own stamp on a genre that we love but from which we have often felt excluded.”
Per the partial directors’ statement, Sam Freeman and Ng Choon-Ping have a point. Queer protagonists are a rarity when it comes to certain genres, particularly regarding the kinds of films that sites like mine usually cover. I’ve even had conversations with mutuals about films like these over the years and some ideas they’ve had which sort of just sat on the shelf and were never fully realized. With circumstances like these, a film like Femme feels like a breath of fresh air.
I was keen to start this review by exclaiming how on the edge of my seat I was for the better half of this movie. It’s a very different kind of film that tackles the revenge thriller genre in a way that entertains and challenges norms, and with a story that casts a crucial spotlight on an important subject matter, and messaging that stands all the more concurrent to this day in light of the levels of hate crime and suicides faced by the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s also why I say anyone against drag queen story hour events can go eat a dick.
Alas, here’s a story for you, one that follows up on the ambitious efforts heretofore prefaced in the aforementioned writer/director team’s 2021 short. Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) is an absolute star in his community, a successful drag performer living his best life among friends at their spacious and lofty flat. To his chagrin though, he’s also drawn the ire of a small gang of homophobic thugs led by Preston (George MacKay) while in line at the nearest convenient store for a pack of cigarettes. Push literally comes to shove as Jules is harrassed and brutally attacked, and left bloodied and naked, all before the film’s opening title appears, bookending the ten-minute setup.
The remainder of Femme is a dark chronicling of Jules’s introspective endeavors, having internalized his trauma to the point of near anti-social angst, escaping into periodic “Street Fighter V” gameplay. As the film picks up three months following the initial incident, Jules decides to venture outside in plain clothes to a gay sauna where lo and behold, he spots Preston, paving the way for the opportune start at a revenge ploy that finds Jules getting a little closer to his assaulter than he thought he would. What’s more is that Preston far from remembers the night, and as the rough start to their situationship evolves into something more consenting, it’s only a matter of time before things boil over into an explosive confrontation.
How Femme manages to illustrate this is another story. The writing and characterization with respect to the roles, and the concepts of role reversal and power brokering play intergrally into the story’s progression. Jules is a naturally feminine person, where Preston is about as toxic and macho as is your average alpha bro with a podcast. The distinction between both partners is made clear and crystal, which makes it all the more unnerving in the events that fold as Preston’s vicious and violent side surfaces; At one point in the film when Preston invites Jules into his place for a go in the sack, Preston’s friends surprise him at the last minute, forcing the two to think on their feet before they’re caught in the act. The result is one of the first in the film’s early and brilliant phases of Jules’s evolution as he plots the long game of his vengeful machinations. That’s just one half of the battle for our protagonist, with the other half spent weighing the pros and cons of getting even, and minding whether or not it’s revenge that he wants.
The breakdown that happens by the end underscores exactly this, in a near-cataclysmic moment preambled by a plot build-up that sees Jules, albeit reluctantly, weaving his way into Preston’s untenable and heteronormative social circle. As impressive as is film’s invariable unmasking of both characters, it pales in comparison to the weight of watching Jules code-switch his way to survival, and the internal pressure cooker of Preston’s hair-trigger psyche as a man’s man covering the fact that he likes men. Consequently, the aftermath of this is seeing the beauty and ebullience of one man’s life as a man comfortable in his own skin and clothes, compared to a man who wears his insecurities just as loudly.
Vicious and direct in its ubiquitous delivery, Femme is a propulsive and unnerving neo-noir thriller that pulls no punches. Challenging the norms of sex and sexuality and confronting hate and homophobia are just the welcome caveats that come with Freeman and Ng’s debut while crafting a solid, stimulating tale which, in the end, is less about inflicting pain in response to it, and more about the extraneous healing process it took to make these characters just a little more whole. If the old adage “Hurt people hurt people” was a movie, Femme is certainly a familiar chapter to many who can relate.
Femme was reviewed for the 24th Boston Underground Film Festival.