‘Femme’ Review – A Gripping Thriller Not For The Faint Of Heart

Queer cinema has had quite the revival over the past few years with masterpieces like Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire to Julia Ducournau’s wildly inventive, Titane. The world is seeing queer stories in a whole new way. We’re not just being introduced to tokenized gay characters or witnessing their struggles with their sexuality anymore. Thanks to the influx of new, diverse voices, we are now firmly telling stories in the lives of queer people. Much like how Todd Field’s TÁR looked at power in the hands of a queer person, or Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers looked at loneliness and mental health, we are getting stories that find ways to explore the many facets of humanity and pinpoint a universal truth. Femme, the debut directorial effort by Sam Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, is a story about revenge, seduction, and the ills of self-loathing.

George MacKay (1917, Captain Fantastic) and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Candyman) lead this tense erotic thriller about a Black drag performer in London named Jules (Stewart-Jarrett), who becomes reclusive after a hate crime, but finds the opportunity for revenge when he catches his assailant in a gay sauna. MacKay is in terrifying top form in this performance as Preston, a self-hating, closeted, bootleg clothes dealer. Preston eyes Jules when he’s in drag, but doesn’t recognize him months later. This gives Jules the idea to seduce and record Preston to expose him on the internet for the world to see.

What follows is a tense, cat-and-mouse game of seduction, violence, and secrets. Jules spends his days locked in his apartment endlessly playing Street Fighter, while his two friends Alicia (an underused Asha Reid) and Toby (John McCrea) are trying (and failing miserably) to get Jules out of his traumatic state. On a whim, Jules goes to a bathhouse, where he spots Preston who makes a big scene about the gay men in the sauna, only to later bring Jules home for sex. It’s then we meet Oz (Aaron Heffernan) and discover who Preston is putting on the show for. Oz’s crew is a group of hyper-masculine, dangerous, homophobes who were with Preston the night he attacked Jules. It is Preston’s desperation to not get exposed to them and others that fuels Jules’s attempt at revenge.

The narrative shift towards Preston and his identity is a fascinating one as it does something revenge thrillers rarely do: make you see the other side. Most often when we think of those who’ve wronged and hurt us, they are unworthy of mercy or forgiveness. They are usually shown to be irredeemable, so punishment for them is always seen as cathartic. Here, the filmmakers take a different approach. Shining a light on Preston that illustrates how his self-hatred has been ultimately hurting him as much as it has been hurting others. As Preston and Jules’s relationship continues, we see him become less aggressive and more comfortable with himself and his sexuality. The film manages to get you on Preston’s side despite what he has done. Still, the film stays with Jules’s revenge mission, making every interaction between the two rife with tension and uncertainty that will leave you on the edge of your seat. 

What ultimately sells this film are the performances; Nathan Stewart-Jarrett is electric throughout this film. Firmly capturing the uber-confidence of his drag persona, Aphrodite Jones, while also bringing forth the sincerity and vulnerability behind Jules. He is also captivating and mesmerizing as he seduces and deceives Preston. Anyone watching will be impressed by and equally terrified for him. The reason for that is because of George MacKay’s unbelievable performance as Preston. MacKay completely envelopes this role. For an actor who has excelled and done exceedingly well as a wide-eyed sensitive hero in most of his roles, here he gets to explore a much darker side to himself. Preston is volatile, unstable, and unpredictably violent. He also can be very verbally abusive – trigger warning for those with sensitivity to certain choice words. MacKay lets them fly flagrantly with the right amount of bile and viciousness that could be hard to hear or witness.

Femme is intense, graphic, and not for the faint of heart. It will grip, shock, and amaze you in the different directions that it goes in, and will impress you in the way the story ultimately shakes out. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George MacKay put on an absolute clinic of masterpiece performances that will have you tossing and turning back and forth on who you side with. Directors Freeman and Choon Ping have established themselves firmly with this piece and will have everyone clamoring for more after this. 

Femme is currently playing in select theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The film will expand nationally on April 5, 2024 courtesy of Utopia. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAWWRga6KFU]