In this white-knuckle thriller set in London, a drag performer seduces his attacker, an intensely closeted hustler played by George MacKay.
In “Femme,” a white-knuckle erotic thriller directed by Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, the formula of the conventional revenge plot is scrambled. The victim in the film uses his sexuality to break down his attacker, but along the way he develops a dubious affection for his foe that explores the performance of gender and its kinky connection to dynamics of dominance and submission.
By night, Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) is a headlining drag performer at a queer nightclub in East London. In the beginning of the film, a few blocks from this sanctuary, he’s brutalized by a thuggish homophobe with neck tattoos.
Months later, Jules heads to a gay sauna where he finds his aggressor, Preston (George MacKay), lurking in a corner. Preston doesn’t know that Jules is the same man he beat up, and the two begin regularly hooking up. Jules’s terrible secret and Preston’s short fuse give the film its underlying current of menace, while jittery, intimate camerawork homes in on the men’s wary, jaw-clenched faces, their bodies seemingly always on the verge of violence.
Jules is weirdly turned on by Preston’s bullish machismo, though he plans to gain the other man’s trust long enough to shoot a sex tape. Outing the intensely closeted Preston is Jules’s intended form of revenge. Preston’s toxic-bro roommates always seem to be hovering when the men plan their trysts, so Jules has plenty of opportunities to blow Preston’s cover. Yet Jules goes through the bulk of the film in a hoodie and slacks (his straight-guy costume), per Preston’s request.
On the one hand, “Femme” makes a lot of effort to humanize its homophobe, played by a stellar MacKay with the defensive swagger of an abused dog. But it’s a questionable focus when the story is ostensibly about a Black man’s rehabilitation and victory over his white abuser. Yet the film avoids a cut-and-dried triumphalism for something more slippery and, perhaps, more meaningful, too: Sometimes vengeance pales in comparison to the realization that your enemy is too small and pathetic to bother kicking around.
Femme
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
