Femme
Written and Directed by Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping
Starring Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George MacKay
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour, 39 minutes
In theaters April 5

by Megan Robinson, Staff Writer

Femme is not easy to digest. From the moment Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), in full drag, spots Preston (George MacKay) from across the street, covered in tattoos and shadows, the echoes of “he’s cute” can’t stave off the tension. Preston is an outsider, or so Jules thinks, which makes their encounter at a convenience store stiff, uncomfortable, and, soon, filled with anger. The confidence with which Jules fights back against Preston’s homophobia is all a façade; after all, he stands stiff in the checkout line, desperate for those cigarettes he was fresh out of. When the violence finally runs its course, the tension bubble exploding into Jules being attacked and nearly stabbed by Preston, it sets the tone for the rest of the film. But does the film’s ever-present tension, in the end, burst into something by the end? Is it worth it?

As a Neo-noir, Femme succeeds in every way. Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, as writer-directors, understand the genre intimately as they cook up a tantalizing revenge plot that keeps tensions high. After the attack, Jules falls into a depressive episode, only pushed back to the outside world again by his roommate and into a gay sauna. Jules meets Preston again, unrecognized by the self-loathing, secretly gay man, and revenge becomes a more concrete plan as the two go on dates and continuously have sex in secret, remote locations. In every scene, each character has ulterior motives, something to hide from the other or from society at large. No one can quite guess where Femme is going at any given time, and it creates an exciting uncomfortability throughout.

That being said, the unpredictability of the film can often leave one guessing why exactly the characters make the choices they do. While Preston tends to talk on and on about himself, and assert himself as the dominant person in the budding relationship between the two, that leaves Jules as a much more internalized figure. Jules is plotting, his quest for revenge a slow burn of unease compared to Preston’s early bloody outburst. The label of “femme fatale” can fit Jules well, but in the end the ultimate purpose of his decisions remains sight unseen. Revenge, it seems, is not the right answer to finding justice, but who cares about the greater good when such raw, real violence, that queer people experience daily, is on full display? The question becomes not whether vengeance is worth it, but whether that really matters when our lives are at stake. Jules can find the good in Preston, and while many have praised George MacKay’s performance, it can be a wonder if the audience will find that same good in him.

The film works with very few characters, highlighting Jules and Preston as a strange, more dangerous duo that both wield power over each other. The back and forth between love story and revenge-fueled Neo-noir is not an easy combination to pull off. Even Alan J. Pakula’s 1971 thriller Klute doesn’t dare make the titular member of its duo the threat that his counterpart fears him to be. Stewart-Jarrett and MacKay have to embody opposites that must shift and change who they are out of fear. MacKay is domineering, a bonafide cretin with a short fuse; likewise, Stewart-Jarrett balances the stiffness of performing appropriately straight for Preston’s taste and the seductive games to win Preston over, to make him forget his internalized homophobia.

Their dynamic, however, never feels as balanced as the performances they have to create. In the second half of the film, a shift occurs between the characters’ power dynamic, but it feels more like the product of Jules having a nice night with his roommates than a genuine shift between he and Preston, whose anger that same night leaves Jules trembling just the same as in the aftermath of his attack. Preston’s weakness comes from being around his supposed friends, and Jules’ strength from his own real friends; this mirroring, however, does not create a smooth transition or arc for their dynamic one-on-one. While Freeman and Ng want to meld and mesh genres, they instead create two separate halves, where Jules and Preston flip like switches. With this, a newfound focus on Preston is meant to elicit more sympathy — but that first moment he’s in the film makes it hard to want the best for him.

For decades, the noir genre has asked us to find sympathy in the morally gray, to question our violent impulses, and, more often than not, find a particular breed of women to be untrustworthy. Femme takes that last convention and puts the audience in the shoes of someone filling that same role, not because Jules is particularly conniving, hypersexual, or downright evil, but because he is feminine, something that Preston fears. In society at large, femininity is both asked of women to conform to and subsequently ridiculed, and to be a feminine, gay, Black man who does drag opens up that same world of mockery and violence. The key problem, though, is that Jules is both femme fatale and detective out for justice, and achieves nothing. One is left feeling rather cold by the film’s end, and it’s not because of the tough image it closes on. Instead, genre conventions are followed to a tee, when before they had been used to create an uneasy tone and melded together to flip our preconceptions.

Femme asks Jules and viewers alike how much they can take of the squirming, complicated mix of revenge and romance. There is meticulous plotting and attention to detail, particularly in the costuming that acts as excellent planting and payoff. To gasp in shock at the film’s twists and turns, which are not viscerally disturbing but rather a long game of remembering what truly matters to and scares these characters, is entertaining. To see a modern queer film that creates these internal conflicts within the audience as well as its characters is highly intriguing. The dialogue surrounding the film, however, will determine its fate. How much can one really take of a romance between victim and gay basher? How much sympathy can one feel for said gay basher’s own struggles? And how much, really, should Jules take? Femme has some delicious moments of nausea and domination that create a winding thriller, but it just might be pulling its punches in all the wrong places.