Revenge is a dish best served in high heels, mug painted to the gods.
In the upcoming thriller, Femme, one drag queen takes matter into her own finely manicured hands, flipping genre convention on its head.
Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Misfits, Generation) stars as Jules, a.k.a Aphrodite Banks, a glamorous queen who’s made quite a name for herself in the London drag scenes.
One night, Jules becomes the victim of a hate crime at the hands of a hateful young man named Preston (1917‘s George Mackay), rattled to the point that he’s about to retire Aphrodite Banks for good.
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However, Jules gets a shock when he runs into Preston at a gay sauna, realizing his attacker was clearly deeply closeted—and that he doesn’t recognize Jules out of drag.
It’s then that the gears start turning for Jules. Before long, he’s infiltrated Preston’s life and discovers the power in “a different kind of drag.” But will this be a story of revenge of redemption?
Femme comes from first-time feature directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, based off their short film of the same name, which debuted last year at SXSW and was nominated for a BAFTA. (It starred I May Destroy You‘s Paapa Essiedu and Beach Rats‘ Harris Dickinson in the lead roles.)
The story sure sounds like it’ll touch on some taboo themes, so we’ll approach with caution. But the filmmakers maintain the film is all about exploring and exploding “conventional ideas of sexuality, masculinity, patriarchy, and identity.”
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You won’t be able to look away.
As they shared with Variety, “the seed of Femme came from our desire to flip the classic hyper-masculinity of the neo-noir thriller on its head. By putting a queer protagonist at the heart of our revenge story, we aimed to put our own stamp on a genre that we love but from which we have often felt excluded.”
Indeed, there’s a lot of style to be found in the first teaser for the film, which just dropped online ahead of its February 19 premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival. You can check it out below:
Femme does not yet have international distribution, so stay tuned for additional festival dates and further release information.
Ronbo
I have a friend in LA who keeps asking me how much it costs to get Queerty to do this same publicity for his projects. I suspect when it’s a real thing it costs less – but, Graham Gremore is the person he should pay. For special projects, he will publish multiple false stories about gays implying that we are predators preying on youth. Graham’s false stories about gay, progressive Alex Morse sparked an entire industry over at FOX attacking us a predators and “groomers”.
Graham did not apologize or return any of the cash when his false reporting came to light. So maybe he is outing himself and elevating his status in the Log Cabin Republicans. I’m sure he’ll have no problems taking small change from gays, as well.