FEMME - Mark Reviews Movies

Femme, Utopia

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 21, 2024

Hate permeates and spreads, and Femme begins with a crime that seems to be founded upon one type of hate, only to reveal that it both is in a certain way and stems from hate of a different sort. This is a provocative film that asks us if there are and should be limits to sympathy.

The crime that sets the story in motion is perpetrated against Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), a gay man and professional drag performer in London. After a show at the local club where he's a regular, Jules heads to a local convenience store, where he's confronted by a group of guys. They mock and insult him with homophobic epithets, but Jules has something of an advantage on the instigator of the harassment.

He noticed Preston (George MacKay) outside the club before the performance, and the stares this stranger laid toward Jules didn't look judgmental. In fact, Jules is convinced this guy was checking him out and tells Preston's buddies so. Angered by the insinuation, Preston follows Jules outside, grabs him, and begins beating him after Jules pushes away the harasser. After being forced to strip naked and left alone bloodied and bruised on the sidewalk, Jules returns to the club for help.

Three months later, Jules refuses to leave his apartment. His roommates Toby (John McCrea) and Alicia (Asha Reid) try to convince him to go anywhere, but the trauma is too much. Eventually, he does leave for a local gay sauna, only to encounter a familiar face next to him in the locker room. It's Preston, who doesn't seem to recognize the man he so severely assaulted only a few months ago and asks Jules to meet him outside. Preston insists they exchange phone numbers to meet later, and Jules accepts.

His motive is unclear initially. Perhaps it's just curiosity. Maybe he's scared of what Preston might do if he refuses. It's entirely possible Jules already has the spark of a plot in mind when he gives Preston his number, because he does come up with a plan to get revenge on this violent person, this hypocrite, and this man who is so ashamed of and embarrassed by his sexuality that he would brutally attack someone for even making a hint about the truth of who he is.

That last part is the most fascinating element of the debut feature from co-writers/co-directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping. We have every reason to despise Preston for his actions. Jules has a completely justifiable motive for wanting to inflict some kind of pain on the man who physically wounded him, psychologically scarred him, and made him so scared of being in public that he has more or less given up on any kind of personal or professional life beyond the confines of his apartment.

His plan, by the way, doesn't involve violence. It's to secretly record the two of them having sex, upload the video online, and out Preston to anyone who might see the video and recognize him. It would humiliate Preston, especially if his friends, whom he's so eager and desperate to please and be among, were to somehow discover his secret.

Doesn't all of this point to something? Isn't Preston wounded, scarred, and scared in his own way? He most certainly is, and as Jules spends more time with the man in order to achieve his revenge scheme, he starts to see those qualities in Preston, too. That doesn't change anything about what Preston did to Jules, but does it alter how Jules sees the man now?

These are difficult and troubling questions, and Freeman and Ping treat them as such—not as some thought exercise about empathy and the efficacy of revenge, but as the source for a compelling, character-based pseudo-thriller about two people in a lot of pain who could find healing in each other. The only snag to this being a romance is obvious, because Preston is the one who specifically caused Jules' pain and the only way Jules can think of healing is by bringing agony to Preston's life. That Preston is occasionally capable of tenderness and vulnerability when he's alone with Jules helps the latter's plan, of course, but doesn't it also suggest that Preston might be worthy of forgiveness and a chance to embrace who he is?

The performances here are key to the film's success, because it depends on us believing all of this on emotional level and considering the possibility that neither of these men are as simple as the event that brought them together is. Stewart-Jarrett has the tricky task of constantly weighing Jules' confusion and uncertainty about his plan, as well as the very distinct chance that Jules is either falling for the Preston he gets to know or at least coming to believe that this man might not deserve more pain than he's already experiencing on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, MacKay has to make Preston equal parts a legitimate threat and the inspiration for some degree of sympathy. It's an exceptional performance that juggles those characteristics and allows them to live together in dissonance, if only because we do find ourselves torn by whether Preston deserves comeuppance or if his tortured existence is punishment enough.

Does anyone deserve that kind of life, though? That's the ultimate question of Femme, which pushes these two characters to limit and beyond, leaving us haunted by the reality that, under these circumstances, no answer can be found—except that pain is a constant.

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