Femme review – an unin­hib­it­ed, spikey por­trait of revenge

In the UK, LGBTQ+ hate crimes have been steadi­ly ris­ing over the past five years. Inci­dents against trans peo­ple have increased to 186% and 112% on the basis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. These alarm­ing fig­ures can feel hard to grasp but the human­i­ty of this data is con­densed into direc­tors Sam H. Free­man and Ng Choon Ping’s star­tling film – a fea­ture-length adap­ta­tion of the direc­tors’ BAF­TA-nom­i­nat­ed 2021 short film – that bold­ly tack­les the fall­out of homo­pho­bic violence.

Femme’s cen­tral char­ac­ters meet in a vio­lent alter­ca­tion that pro­vides real-life ground­ing to hate crime sta­tis­tics. Fol­low­ing a drag lip­sync per­for­mance to Cleo by Shy­girl, the glam­orous Jules (Nathan Stew­art-Jar­rett) is grab­bing cig­a­rettes at a cor­ner shop when a group of lads begin spout­ing threats. Jules chirps back at taunt­ing ring­leader Pre­ston (George MacK­ay), a hot-tem­pered man with dark tat­toos that crawl up his pale neck. Anx­i­ety ris­es as the hand­held cam­era pur­sues Jules’ attempt­ed escape. One minute a regal, cerulean vision of con­fi­dence, the next Jules is left stripped and bruised on the pavement.

Three months after the attack, Jules’ bruis­es have healed but the emo­tion­al scars remain deep as he with­draws from his friends and drag com­mu­ni­ty. Jules has found a dif­fer­ent form of escapism: bathing in the neon cobalt lights of a gay sauna. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er James Rhodes brings colour to the dark­ness but under seduc­tive lights, there is a spark of dan­ger. It’s here, in the shad­ows, that Jules spots Pre­ston with a small white tow­el around his waist. Jules’ assailant doesn’t recog­nise him and he fol­lows Pre­ston to the chang­ing room, then into his car, flat, and bed.

Sleep­ing with the ene­my is Jules’ path to vengeance, plot­ting that post­ing revenge porn of Pre­ston is jus­ti­fied retal­i­a­tion. Aggres­sive sex scenes in the black abyss of wood­land or the grim shad­ows of an alley­way become part of Jules’ mis­sion for sex­u­al pow­er. Though he’s sub­ject to Preston’s snarling gaze, alone on fan­cy din­ner dates and in each other’s bed­rooms the laser focus on revenge seems to waver. An ambi­gu­i­ty is caught in the fear­less­ness of Stewart-Jarrett’s exquis­ite per­for­mance as Jules comes to know Pre­ston beyond his hard­ened façade.

Inter­twin­ing unfet­tered vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty with a burn­ing ambi­tion for revenge, Stew­art-Jar­rett for­ti­fies Jules’ anx­ious­ness with a delib­er­ate­ly rehearsed com­po­sure. It’s a reward­ing­ly com­plex char­ac­ter-focused revenge thriller, espe­cial­ly when Free­man and Ping’s script digs deep­er with Jules con­fess­ing his drag alter-ego felt like ​“the real me, and I was the per­for­mance.” The beau­ti­ful­ly deliv­ered sen­ti­ment by Stew­art-Jar­rett solid­i­fies Femme’s inter­est in self-recla­ma­tion rather than explic­it and shock­ing violence.

Sim­i­lar­ly impres­sive, MacK­ay shoul­ders a nuanced depic­tion of a young man trapped by his own demons void of eye-rolling cliché. Free­man and Ping’s script doesn’t fall back on an easy asser­tion of the clos­et­ed attack­er. Instead, Femme tack­les inter­nalised homo­pho­bia in a con­fronta­tion­al man­ner with Preston’s per­verse actions are inter­rupt­ed by a sweet peck on Jules’ lips. Despite the divi­sions reflect­ed in Buki Ebiesuwa’s dex­ter­ous cos­tume design and the inter­nal lives of these two char­ac­ters, Free­man and Ping’s film unites char­ac­ters on an emo­tion­al lev­el for this unin­hib­it­ed, spikey por­trait of revenge.