We chat to writer-directors Sam H Freeman and Ng Choon Ping about the feature-length adaptation of their own short film, Femme.
With both iterations of Femme, Sam H Freeman and Ng Choon Ping have brought LGBTQ+ protagonists to the typically hyper-masculine crime thriller. The 2021 short – featured in Film Stories issue 31 – made us fear for the safety of Paapa Essiedu’s Jordan as he gets in a car with flirtatious drug dealer Wes (Harris Dickinson). The gripping neo-noir feature shares the bones of that film, but otherwise goes off in its own direction, presenting a murkier, morally grey world inhabited by complex protagonists. Freeman describes making the feature as having “levelled up,” and he couldn’t be more correct. Femme stands among the best films of the year, and it’s marked the pair as filmmakers to keep a close eye on.
Femme is led by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as drag artist Jules, who finds freedom and power in his drag act and the costumes and make-up that go with it. A homophobic attack perpetrated by the ultra-masculine Preston (1917’s George MacKay) and his friends makes the previously outgoing Jules withdrawn, but when he runs into Preston in a gay sauna, he sees an opportunity for revenge.