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'Femme' filmmakers explain why 'revenge had to lead to tragedy' in queer thriller's ending
'For the revenge story to feel correct, what is taken away in the end needs to be what is taken away in the beginning'
Agile Films
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Femme, now in theaters.
Nathan Stewart-Jarrett's Jules gets his revenge at the end of Femme — but at what cost?
In the British thriller, written and directed by Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, George MacKay's Preston assaults drag performer Jules (Stewart-Jarrett's Jules) outside a convenience shop. But when Jules discovers Preston is closeted, he seduces his unwitting attacker (who doesn’t recognize him out of drag) and records their sex, hoping to get his revenge by exposing him as a gay man. Jules ultimately gets the footage but opts not to use it, deciding to work through his trauma by returning to his art. But despite his change of heart, the unlikely pair can't avoid a heartbreaking conclusion.
During the tense queer film’s brutal final sequence, Jules returns to the stage for an epic drag performance in which he shares his entire revenge plot — only to discover Preston in the crowd. (One of Jules’ friends had tricked Preston into attending, saying it was a birthday party.) The two end up having a heartbreaking confrontation that turns into a grueling parking lot brawl. The film ends with Preston crushed and crying on the ground while Jules is left questioning what he’s done.
"Revenge had to lead to tragedy for us," Freeman explains. "It couldn’t be revenge and a happy ending, but it felt compelling to us that part of Jules’ journey is stepping away from revenge and tragedy when the train had already left the station, so events spiral without him meaning them to."
“Revenge is often glorified, but there's something about the nature of revenge," adds MacKay. "It’s much more messy, much more personal than was intended, and even more than the genre would suggest."
Agile Films
The ending also marks a full circle moment from the film's beginning, when Jules is the one left broken and beaten on the ground. “You can measure Preston’s personal journey in the end when he chooses to go inside [the drag show], and the tragedy of it is that he gets there and it all blows up,” Freeman says. “[Jules] shows Preston a life that could have been much happier for him and then takes it from him, which is what Preston does to Jules at the beginning.”
“In order for the revenge story to feel correct, what is taken away in the end needs to be what is taken away in the beginning,” Ng echoes.
While it's unclear where the characters will go from here, it's hard to imagine that Preston has an easy road ahead. “For Preston, from my point of view, I don’t know if he ever comes back from that, so I thought there was a real, true tragedy in that I don’t think he walks away with a lesson: It sort of breaks him,” MacKay says.
“He almost escaped from this cage, and then he’s thrown back into it. I would hope some years down the line he sees there is a world out there that he could step into if he does some work on himself,” muses Freeman.
As for Jules's future, Stewart-Jarrett is happy to leave things up in the air, “I want it to be ambiguous. Not just for me as an actor, but I don’t know if it’s lost love or revenge or something else. It’s lots of different things, but it cannot be one."
Femme is in theaters now.
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Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.
