Femme: a neo-noir thriller about a gay man getting revenge

It’s early morning and everyone’s a bit bleary-eyed when I sit with Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George MacKay, stars of the new revenge thriller Femme. Stewart-Jarrett quickly grabs a second coffee in preparation for our chat as we delve into what drew them to the film, how to tell queer stories and whether or not revenge is a good idea.

In Femme, Jules, played by Stewart-Jarrett (Misfits), pops to a corner shop for cigarettes following a stunning performance as his drag persona Aphrodite. There, he tenses as a rowdy group of guys walks in. The inevitable queerphobia begins, but Jules, though clearly shaken, bites back. It doesn’t go down well. The gang follow him and launch a vicious attack led by a heavily tattooed Preston, played by George MacKay (1917).

The attack leaves Jules traumatised, barely leaving the house for months. Eventually, one night he drags himself to a gay sauna and there he sees Preston once again. Not recognising him, Preston invites Jules back to his flat, where it quickly becomes evident that Preston’s sexuality is a closely coveted secret. The pair soon start meeting regularly for extravagant dinners and late-night sex in deserted woodlands and car parks. Jules, however, has a plan to get his own back – he has pursued this relationship with the aim of filming the pair having sex and uploading it online. 

Both leads dazzle in this modern neo-noir revenge thriller, Stewart-Jarrett’s quiet, underplayed Jules contrasting to MacKay’s volatile and angry Preston. “I’m interested in the idea of masculinity,” MacKay says, “both in myself, and as it’s being recalibrated more generally at the moment. There are elements of certain masculine ideals that are aging right now that I’m also still weirdly drawn to. Preston offered a character that helped explore this, even though it doesn't necessarily give any answers in the doing of it.”

The title Femme refers to the categorisation of some queer people, gay men in particular, as exuding the feminine. Campness, drag, a softness of voice and touch – it all forms a stereotype that Jules fits but Preston seems to outwardly abhor. He is the archetype alpha male, an ex-prisoner, violent, straight-backed and cocky. He is not someone to be messed with. That his queerness could be seen to undermine his masculinity is a pivotal theme of this film, one MacKay expertly and painstakingly explores through the smallest of movements, a look here or there, a slight shift in tone.

For Stewart-Jarrett, the main draw to this film was the way his character holds such multitudes, switching gears so fluidly and easily despite a fear we can see in the tightness of his shoulders and furtive smiles. When Preston’s flatmates return early one night, interrupting the pair as they have rather aggressive sex, Jules is forced to join them, code-switching to fit in with their crude banter and masculine competitiveness. He is as convincing in this role as he is in drag, seemingly enjoying the power this particular performance – a form of drag, perhaps – lends him.

Stewart-Jarrett embodies these different sides of Jules effortlessly. “I liked that [Jules] had to amplify and dial up different parts of himself and go on this journey. He has these peaks and troughs that I was really eager to explore,” he says. “I was like, how do I get the history of this person through with such little and unrevealing dialogue? That was what drew me to this film, because oftentimes a character can be very verbose, so you’re giving stuff away all the time. Here, I was excited about playing my cards a little closer to my chest.”

When we delve into the topic of revenge, it lights a fire in MacKay and Stewart-Jarrett. They both have strong responses, but then falter in their decisiveness. Stewart-Jarrett even follows up the next day with a voicenote adding a revision to his original answer. “I think revenge breeds more revenge, and for me that’s the moral of the story,” says MacKay. He adds, though, that what Preston does to Jules is so horrifying that dismissing revenge as an appropriate reaction is not entirely possible. “I’m not for a second suggesting that Jules should just concede that desire for revenge for the betterment of the world, but I don't think revenge is healthy. Revenge is for the audience and for the history books, but the reality of living with taking a life back or hurting someone in return is not satisfying,” he says.

As we watch Jules battle internally with his plot to upload the video, we too consider this tension. How do we reconcile furthering harm with a need for justice? “It depends – if you’ve had everything taken from you, then yeah, maybe that's what you need to do,” Stewart-Jarrett says, facing his own reckoning with this question in his follow-up.

Lacking in the film is an exploration of race. Jules is Black, Preston white, and Preston’s violence is hard to remove from this distinction. I ask MacKay and Stewart-Jarrett about this potential omission, but they feel that the racial element was innate, rather than something that required explicit examination. “Of course there’s a power dynamic when a white person strips a Black person of their agency, but to me the film wasn’t about that,” Stewart-Jarrett says, before adding, “But it is a through line. It’s something that you could say colours every interaction.” The pair conclude that race is a ‘base note’ in the film, one that is present but not the central theme.

I also want to probe another trope. The assault scene early on in the film is hard to watch, not just because of its violence but because of its sad familiarity. Is it time, perhaps, for cinema to move away from depicting the darker side of queer existence? Can we make more space for queer joy? Stewart-Jarrett defies the idea that LGBTQ+ stories must adhere to one theme or emotion. “I think we need the full gamut of all of it, rather than saying, OK, we’ve covered oppression of LGBTQ+ people, now we must move on to joy,” he says. “Marginalised people are often told they must tell a particular story, but there is one group that is allowed to make anything they want and it doesn't have to be about their identity.”

Femme certainly holds its own, managing to resist being shoved into a box without over-complicating itself in an attempt to make a grand political statement. “If you start off from, ‘I’m going to make this big declaration,’ I think it often rings a little hollow,” Stewart-Jarrett says. In fact, part of what drew both him and MacKay to this film was its simplicity. In its essence, Femme is a tale as old as time, a tussle between two people, two worlds. There is a hero and an anti-hero, and the scales repeatedly switch, drawing us closer to one or the other at any given moment. It is beautifully shot and even more beautifully performed.