Femme (2024)

Debut film makers Freeman and Ping have put together something remarkable with Femme a film that is part revenge thriller, part adept character study, and part exploration of the complexities of queer trauma. Anchored by a pair of subtly intricate performances from leads Stewart-Jarrett and Mackay, Femme pulls no punches in how blatantly it traverses gender performance, fear, and rage in queer men against the backdrop of how they are asymmetrically positioned to straightness. For a lot of queer male viewers Femme will speak to deep insecurities and unresolved wounds in ways that might be hard for others to understand but the film uses an emotional language that will communicate much of these feelings, known all to well by many queer men, to its audience.  

Jules and Preston are very different queer men who both wear their gender presentations as armour against a world that teaches them to hate themselves. The film doesn't try to equate them, but does give both space to exist in their entirety. Jules' strengths rise from his femininity and the embracing of his gender non-conformity while Preston leans hard into masculine presenting performance to a toxic degree. Both remain vulnerable to the slings and arrows of heteronormativity and the film explores how each suffers weakness, and perhaps some exhaustion, leading to fleeting contact. Jules' code switching as he moves from one type of performance to another and his faulty attempts to figure out exactly what feels the most natural make him susceptible to the brief moments of connection Preston offers as his own shields of brutality come down. 

But the film is honest with just how dangerous and unhealthy Preston's bully roleplay and the anger it rises in him is, for both men. Femme doesn't give Preston a redemption arc even as it does show him the empathy to see how much he craves the connection Jules offers in their moments of weakness. Femme is also remarkably honest about just how tortured Jules is with his feelings. He manages resentment (even hate) along with desire and perhaps some pity. There are moments where Jules perhaps convinces himself that there can be connection and the labyrinthine emotions that Stewart-Jarrett is able to express here is palpable. Mackay is also remarkable demonstrating Preston's self-loathing and misanthropy as his character's barriers get broken down and he ineptly attempts to show love, or as close as he can get to it as he is. 

Femme isn't going to offer queer men the happy ending that has a necessary and important place in some queer cinema, but it is going to offer an unflinching exploration of the ways we struggle with how much our culture tries to make us hate ourselves, the way we often flail in our resistance, sometimes triumphing and sometimes... not. Jules and Preston don't overcome, even if they find moments of joy and honesty with themselves about who they are (fleetingly) but they get to exist and they get to endure. And we get to sit with some familiar and bittersweet emotions that aren't easy to explain or articulate, but that Femme captures so brutally and so eloquently. 

Femme

Starring: Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, George Mackay, John McCrea

Writers/Directors: Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping