EJ Moreno sits down with the filmmakers behind Femme…
As you can see from my review or the gushing during the interview, the directing duo Sam H. Freeman & Ng Choon Ping certainly crafted a film that spoke to me. If it’s the brutally honest look at a queer person reclaiming themselves or deep-diving into the mind of a closeted man, Femme was unafraid to push itself in terms of storytelling.
Speaking with the pair, there’s a lot to learn about the film and the filmmaking process. During our conversation, we discussed being a directing duo and walking the line between shock and art, and I got the pair to praise something about each of their directing styles. Check out our interview and review for Femme below…
Gentlemen, I’m so excited to speak with you. You guys crafted such a beautiful yet brutal look at a very specific gay situation. This calls back to great exploitation films, but you guys walk the balance of shocking but never exploitative. Can either of you speak about crafting that particular tone, which I think is hard to do?
Sam: I think it was just a focus on the story that we’re telling. So we didn’t want to shy away from showing things, but we also didn’t want to sit on images that were shocking for the sake of trying. We never wanted it to feel gratuitous or like we were trying to shock you. We’re trying to tell Jules’s story from his perspective in a very kind, psychologically and emotionally full way. There’s a lot of sex in the film, but all of it serves the story. And we never, you know, there are no kind of lingering looks at sort of body parts and nudity or kind of anything like that.
And actually, so much of the sex, most of it actually is focused up [points at upper body] here because where the story is being told rather than sort of it kind of below the waist.
Ping: To be even more specific, that first attack outside the corner shop. It was very important to us, for the relevance of the big story, that actually, while there seems to be a lot of physical violence, really, the violence is a psychic one. It’s a stripping away of Jules’s drag, much more than inflicting physical wounds on the character.
We choreographed it very, very carefully so that apart from the initial lash, where Jules gets pushed against the wall, that’s it. It’s really about Preston challenging and stripping Jules’s identity from him. That is the trigger, as the film is about reclaiming identity, performing identity, and performing different identities in order to reclaim the original identity.
I have a question about co-directors. Ping, can you speak about, or Sam, can you talk about a moment where you guys feel like one took over the other? Or is there a true collaboration? Or do you guys split duties? I’m always curious since co-directing is such an interesting concept to me.
Sam: It’s really, for us, it’s all about prep. It’s all about discussing every single moment of the film and articulating our vision for every single moment of the film to each other before we’re on set in the work that we did, you know, in the months leading up to the shooting. And actually, it’s a really useful exercise for any director to have to actually articulate, properly articulate all of it because so much of it happens in your head, and you don’t interrogate it properly. And so, Ping and I knew that we had to be on the same page.
You know, it’s independent filmmaking. Time is always going to be of the essence. You can’t stand around chatting. We had to know that to be co-directors and for it to benefit the film, you need to be able to be in two different places. We need to be able to shout cut, and Ping goes that way, and I go that way. And that way, you’re making up time rather than losing it.
So, it was just about trust and knowing that we were both seeing the same thing. If Ping was talking to the DOP and I was talking to the actors or vice versa, we would then come back together and know that we had led them in the same direction.
That’s interesting, having to split up but having the same mind. Ping, is there something that Sam does as a filmmaker that just always amazes you? And reverse Sam, is there something that Ping does that you’re like, what the hell, you’re some wunderkind?
Ping: I find inventing story beats very difficult. Sam is always able to come up with really cool scenes to progress the story. And I just kind of sit back and go, ‘Okay, that’s fantastic.’ It’s perfect. He also has a really good ear for dialogue. The test is in the pudding.
Sam: Part of our process is that the script is a blueprint for what we’re making. Therefore, we’re also really kind of open to it on set if, you know, a line isn’t working for an actor. We know what’s important within any given line or scene, and we can preserve that. But what matters is what we shoot, not what was written on a page months ago. So, we like to give them freedom to adapt lines to make it their own rhythm, which is what they’ve worked on for the character, rather than trying to force someone to say something awkward.
Ping has an eye for continuity, spotting if something is a hair to the left or the right wrongly.
A script supervisor’s dream there.
Sam: Yeah. Ping, you and Tom, our script supervisor. We loved Tom Moody; he was really our third guy who always sat at the monitor with us. You and him, there is like an affinity there, a certain kind of ability. You would make an incredible script supervisor. It’s not that you’re not a script supervisor, but you would make an incredible script supervisor.
So, my last question: I almost fell for this twisted love story. I think a little part of me was that I could fix him with Preston. I think all of us struggle with that mindset sometimes. I truly believe I could fix him. But is that something that you acknowledged when creating this? That there was baiting people in with, ‘Could there be hope?’ or would you be like, ‘No, this is my twisted revenge?’
Ping: I kind of like approaching the question from a sideways [POV]. I think, rightly, the fashion for queer stories is moving toward prioritizing positive experiences, queer joy, and empowerment. But at the same time, have we all not encountered that person that we think we could fix, and we just experienced lots of trauma in going through that?
I don’t know how consciously that went into it, but certainly, there is authenticity in how we feel about their relationship. You know, Jules is obviously the agent of change, the protagonist, and the one pushing forward action. But the thing that’s tugging away at him and that is complicating his revenge is the inevitable humanity of the villain.
Sam: Yeah, that’s really what was important to us, that it wasn’t that we weren’t making kind of moralistic film; it wasn’t black and white. And in that, I suppose, Jules’s revenge on Preston, as a sort of bigger idea outside the specifics of it, is to strip his drag away from him in the same way that Jules had his own drag stripped away.
As you said, doing that reveals the kind of person underneath. I think we were aware that we might feel something as that relationship became genuine for Preston. As he started to explore those parts of himself, maybe we, as an audience, our feelings for him might change, and therefore, our feelings about them as a pair might change.
As we talked about the beginning, we weren’t setting out to make something sort of manipulative or gratuitous. We were just trying to present the characters as we saw them as full human beings. And I think we were aware that possibly the outcome of that might be some confused feelings from people.
Oh, goodness. I love the movie even more now that I’m speaking to you two. You guys broke it down and added so many layers to it. I absolutely love Femme, and the Jules story needs to be told, so thank you both so much.
With his performances as Aphrodite Banks, Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Candyman) has a place among London’s celebrated drag artists. One night, after a show, he steps out to get some cigarettes and is brutally attacked by a man (George MacKay, 1917) out with a gang of his friends. Although Jules is able to recover physically, he withdraws from the outside world, traumatized. Months later, he recognizes his attacker by chance in a gay sauna. Without make-up and wrapped only in a towel, Jules is able to approach the other man incognito and find out who he is. He begins an affair with the closeted Preston with a plan to take his revenge.
Directed by Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, the film stars Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, George MacKay, Aaron Heffernan, John McCrea, and Asha Reid.
Femme is in theaters on March 22nd in New York, March 29th in Los Angeles and Chicago, and expands nationwide on April 5th.
