Femme (Movie)

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    ‘Femme,’ ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ and More Streaming Gems

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    A handful of low-key but formidable dramas dominate this month’s under-the-radar recommendations on your streaming subscription services.‘Femme’ (2024)Stream it on Hulu.It’s a deceptively simple premise: The drag performer Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) is badly beaten in a homophobic attack, only to find the main attacker (George MacKay) cruising for companionship months later. Unrecognized out of drag, Jules decides to entrap and humiliate his attacker, and if you think you know where this is going, you’re in for a surprise. Rather than rehashing the tired, simplistic tropes of the revenge thriller, the writing and directing duo Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping explore the emotional complexities of the trap Jules must set — and in doing so, pose compelling questions about Jules’s own sense of self-worth. Stewart-Jarrett is marvelously understated, carefully choosing when to let his character’s carefully cultivated persona slip, while McKay is chillingly convincing in his tricky characterization of a closeted, self-loathing gay man.‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ (2023)Stream it on Netflix.Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) is a new sixth-grade teacher who finds out exactly how fragile her sense of trust and idealism is in this harrowing drama from the director Ilker Catak. An atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia pervades this German school, thanks to a rash of petty thefts that have teachers and students alike side-eyeing each other. Carla entraps the seemingly clear culprit, and immediately regrets it. Catak, who wrote the screenplay with Johannes Duncker, squeezes the classroom and faculty spaces like a vice, expertly building operatic tension and discomfort (Marvin Miller’s gripping score does much of the work) out of everyday stress, seemingly careening toward an inevitable, violent conclusion; “I wish it had all worked out differently,” Carla says near the end, and by that point, you’re likely to agree.‘I Smile Back’ (2015)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Femme’ Review: Bad Lovers

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      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.FemmeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More