'Femme' review: A queer revenger thriller and forbidden romance

After a homophobic attack, a gay man sets out for revenge on his assailant when he discovers he is closeted in Femme

Anchored by stellar performances by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George MacKay, Femme is a tense, sexy and engrossing queer revenge thriller that feels for us and by us. Subverting the classic “femme fatale” erotic thriller trope and archetype, directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping create a morally ambiguous face-off between two queer men that blurs the line between good and evil and right and wrong. One of the best movies of the year so far.

While the inciting incident of first-time directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping's Femme is a brutal outburst of homophobic violence, I felt an unexpected feeling of relief after it was over. Erotic thrillers like Brian de Palma's Dressed to Kill or Paul Verhoven's Basic Instinct and Elle can at times feel exploitative in their use of violence, sex and sexuality as a plot device. And like those films, as the title implies, Femme centers on a “femme fatale” whose sexuality is front and center. However, instead of feeling like the movie is admonishing our fatale or punishing them for the indiscretions it empowers them. The incident while visceral and vicious doesn't feel lingered on.

It's helpful that unlike the de Palma or Verhoven movies, Freeman and Ping have the utmost respect for their protagonist, drag queen Aphrodite Banks (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett).

When we first meet her, they're performing a surprisingly high production number for a drag club. After her number, Aphrodite notices tattooed and toned Preston (George MacKay) outside the venue watching intently. Jules catches his gaze that she returns with a charismatic smile — he sulks off. Later in the night, Aphrodite is at a bodega when Preston and his friends enter, posturing as men do.

When they start verbally harassing Aphrodite, there's a moment where it seems she's going to try to ignore it and shrink back. But like a switch ticked off in her brain, she decides to take space up as any queer person would and reads them down. Especially Preston who she calls out for checking her out at the club. It's what leads to Preston's assault that leaves Aphrodite beaten and naked on the street.

Three months later, the incident has left Jules, who has given up his Aphrodite drag persona much to the chagrin of his roommates Alicia (Asha Reid) and Toby (John McCrea), completely withdrawn from the world. That's until one day he finds himself in a gay bathhouse where he once again encounters Preston who is cruising. For our straight friends, cruising is when you go to a public space looking for someone to have sex with. It's not helpful that he lashes out at any forward man with a hearty f-slur. “We're all faggots here,” someone cheekily responds.

Both horrified and intrigued, Jules follows Preston to the locker room. Unaware of who Jules is, Preston invites him back to his apartment for sex. Behind Jules' eyes — and a testament to Stewart-Jarrett's quietly powerful and emotive performance — is panic, interest and, horrifyingly to himself and the us, lust. Preston is dominant and very clearly knows what he wants to which Jules obliges, but right as they're about to have sex, his rowdy and drunk roommates return. Panicked and left alone in the room, Jules makes a last minute decision to don the hoodie that Preston wore when he assaulted him and leave the room.

The risky move pays off when Jules is able to pass himself off as an old friend of Preston's and is able to slip out. Angered yet impressed by the move, Preston asks to see Jules again saying he'll text him when he needs him.

Fueled by his performance in the apartment, Jules hatches a plan to get revenge on Preston by weaponizing his sexuality against him and secretly recording a revenge sex tape to out him to the world.

This is where Femme takes a hard firm turn towards a dark and brooding erotic thriller. Jules sets out to lure Preston — like a queer femme fatale — before enacting his revenge. The cat-and-mouse game, that is unbeknownst to Preston, occurs as a series of encounters between the pair that challenge our assumptions of what we know of them. To Jules' surprise, their first meeting after the bathhouse and apartment incident is an intimate dinner where Preston takes care to make Jules comfortable — like a real date. And while the conversation begins to unwrap the mystery, it eventually devolves into a rough sex scene in the woods where Preston leaves Jules to get home on his own.

There's a distinct queerness to the entire story and the way each of the characters functions in Femme.

It feels like it's derived from lived experience. Something that the erotic thrillers of the 90s that it sends up doesn't have with its female characters — those movies are by and large written and directed by men. There isn't good or evil. The rights are as morally ambiguous as the wrongs. While our sympathies at first lie with Jules, the more we learn about Preston gives us an understanding — albeit opaque — of his own queer trauma that he's experiencing. While we never fully dive into his backstory, MacKay's bombastic performance that oscillates between a put on machismo and tender longing tells us everything we need to know about the character — like his tatted skin is a literal armor for his sexuality.

Then there's Jules, who in the pursuit of much-deserved vengeance, has to grapple with the vulnerability and intimacy that he begins to feel towards Preston as he carries out his plan. While the movie never loses its sense of danger and Preston is always presented as a violent figure that could lash out at any moment — especially in an incident when Jules is caught trying to film one of their backseat rendezvous — the focus is very much on a study of the characters. It makes Stewart-Jarrett's performance all the more impressive as he has to communicate Jules' thought process with few words rather furtive glances and body language.

And while Femme has empathy for its characters, it doesn't ask us to forgive them for their sins. That moral ambiguity is what makes the character dynamics as engrossing as the suspense.

As the movie careens to its conclusion, there's a sense of romance. A sense that perhaps a lesser movie would give into. Instead, Femme understands its characters but isn't afraid to leave them as imperfect beings. Perhaps they're capable of change, but that isn't the story that Freeman and Ping are telling. Instead, they're interested in what it is to be unapologetically queer in a space that isn't made for us, how masculinity is a prison that even we sometimes can't escape and how our feelings, as powerful and magnetic as they are, are messy and can lead us down paths we shouldn't follow.

Femme is as messy and beautiful and complicated as we are. It's the kind of queer thriller we deserve.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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Karl Delossantos

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Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.