In 1991, “Street Fighter” made history by introducing the world’s first playable female character in a fighting game, Chun Li. An expert martial artist and Interpol officer, Chun Li has a notorious sense of justice, with much of her arc dedicated to a tireless search for revenge for the wrongful killing of her father. It is unsurprising, then, that Chun Li is Jules’ (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) avatar of choice, the two united by an insatiable thirst for payback.
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If Chun Li seeks the demise of her father’s killer, in “Femme,” Jules’ target is Preston (George MacKay), the thug who painfully bifurcated his life. It is outside of a nightclub, dressed as his drag persona Aphrodite Banks, that Jules first spots the man lurking in the shadows, his stiff posture contradicting the hungry interest in his eyes. He’s still in full Aphrodite gear when they meet again a few hours later, this time under the unforgiving bright lights of a bodega, Preston accompanied by his gang of raucous friends. The meeting is tense and becomes even more so when Jules points out Preston’s previous attempt at flirtation, the undertones of mockery turning the thug into a pit bull.
Egged on by his macho entourage, Preston chases Jules out of the bright bodega and into the dark London streets, ruthlessly punching and kicking and prodding at the frightened body contorting under his knock-off sneakers. The bone-chilling bashing sets the tone for Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s directorial debut, adapted from the duo’s eponymous 2021 short film starring Paapa Essiedu and Harris Dickinson.
Three months after the attack, trauma has Jules hang up his drag queen heels, trading nights out at clubs for nights at home in Chun Li’s company. But fate proves a sneaky mistress, and Jules’ first night out leads him into the gay sauna Preston holds court, with the two meeting under the cold blue hues of steamy changing rooms. Curiosity, ever-dangerous, has Jules run not towards the exit, but instead into the confinements of his aggressor’s car.
The roaring engine of the car signals the beginnings of a twisted affair, Preston smuggling Jules into his flat, thrusting against him once more — this time in search of an entirely different type of relief. The next day, Jules sends him a text. They arrange to meet again. Then again. Then again. In this perilous game, “Femme” lays out the table for a noirish thriller, Jules gradually lulling the self-loathing vandal into the treacherous arms of revenge.
Set almost entirely at night, the soft rays of morning light are only welcomed into the frame when Jules’ tenderness eventually begins to seep beneath the hooligan’s tough shell. The visual nodding to the role reversal that fuels the thriller is one of the many on-the-nose artifices employed by Freeman and Ping, who seem frustratingly set on diluting any tension from their film’s premise. Subtlety proves a scarce commodity as the debuting duo chops at this cautionary tale until its fragile narrative bones are fully exposed, dialogue stripped of any valuable nuance. “Every time you do this, you’re letting them win,” one of Jules’ friends pleads, while Preston repeatedly barks versions of the “if you come for me, I’ll come for you.”
It’s frustrating to watch MacKay and newcomer Stewart-Jarrett (of “Candyman” fame) wrestle with the script’s stunting limitations, a damning contrast between the physicality of their performances responsible for much of what works in “Femme.” MacKay taps into the animalistic masculinity of Ned Kelly in “True History of the Kelly Gang” to sculpt Preston as a raving predator, the grief of self-hatred fuelling lust and disgust alike. Stewart-Jarrett contorts his towering frame to fit into the tight confinements of submission, the sweetness of revenge masking the sourness of shame. Their sexual encounters pulsate with the adrenaline of secrecy and fear a powerful, erogenous stimulant. They pull and tear at one another with haste, far too aware of how even the briefest glimpse of clarity would wash away the addictive waves of desire.
As “Femme” reaches its ultraviolent climax, what lingers is the bitter aftertaste of emptiness. The searing pain that cuts through both characters is at once harrowing and empty, the exercise attempted by Freeman and Ping one far too concerned with the dangers of ambiguity to pay attention to the cunning trap of blatancy. [C+]