Currently on various streaming services – certainly Curzon Home, and with a limited Curzon cinema release to come – I learned about Femme because one of the directors, Sam H Freeman (Ng Choon Ping is the other), takes coffee at my local Haggerston Park kiosk, where I delight in discussing film (among other things), with the wonderful staff, one of whom told me about it.
I have just caught up with it – and it is well worth seeing.
Briefly, drag artist Joel is assaulted and finds his confidence and life shattered. But later, at a gay sauna, he sees his chief assailant – who doesn’t recognise him out of drag – and decides to get revenge on his deeply closeted attacker.
Grainy, grimy and not an easy watch, it is really well made and superbly acted – not least by Nathan Lloyd Stewart-Jarrett as Joel and George MacKay as Preston, his assailant and later lover.
There is a particularly wonderful scene where Joel secures an incredible psychological win against Preston’s homophobic, thuggish mates: with a console in his hands and Street Fighter on the screen, playing as a female fighting character – which is initially laughed at – he simply destroys all opposition in a format that they respect.
A really strong film about gay life – and about the struggle to come out of the closet in a world where it is not always remotely easy, not least in class terms – with an undercurrent of racism present too.
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