After having spoken to directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping following the SXSW premiere of their proof of concept short of the same name back in 2021, we welcome the filmmaking duo back to DN today to dive into their feverish neo-noir revenge thriller feature Femme. The pair have dynamically built upon the world they presented in the short film by taking the innermost struggles and fears faced by their two central characters and amplifying everything around them, resulting in a tension-fuelled wild ride and crushing crescendo of realisation. Femme centres around the disguises used by Jules, played by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and Preston, played by George MacKay, as we see a treacherous game of cat and mouse play out on screen as Jules plans to exact revenge on Preston for the horrific act of violence unleashed upon him. Femme is as beautiful visually as it is engaging narratively, with shifting power dynamics reflected through the film’s frenetic camerawork and compositions which had us thoroughly absorbed throughout. With Femme having picked up two craft awards last week and in the running for a further six prizes at the upcoming BIFA awards including Best British Independent Film, as well as making its nationwide UK cinema debut on the 1st of December, we spoke to the duo about nothing being sacred when developing the feature script from the award-winning short, assembling the edit as they were shooting and bringing on performer Jonbers Blonde as a consultant to ensure the authenticity of the film’s drag elements.
[The following interview is also available to watch at the end of this article.]
Welcome back to Directors Notes, we had the pleasure of speaking to you back in 2021 as Femme the short premiered at SXSW. How have you developed the feature from that impressive proof of concept?
Sam H. Freeman: Often the challenge in expanding a short into a feature is working out how to best stretch something which you already feel has worked and you feel passionately about. Do we build out in front? Do we build out at the end? And I think that’s often quite dangerous because we both believe that when any storytelling really works, it’s usually because it is the correct length for the story that it is. We knew we wanted to make a feature before we made the short and we originally pitched it as a feature without a firm plot in place, but we knew what we were exploring.
We knew the genre, we knew the references, we knew where we wanted to go and the short was a proof of that concept. So when we came to writing the feature, we looked at the short and we decided the thing that was most interesting to us was the relationship between those two characters who are both confronting and struggling with their relationship to their sexuality, to their masculinity and to gender. We thought that that was a really potent dynamic and chemistry. So, we threw out the characters and reconstructed them from the ground up. They were what we transported from the short into the feature and we then built everything around that. Everything else then changed and we went back to the drawing board, nothing was sacred, everything went out the window and we began again.
The feature is centred around our two characters who were so perfectly embodied in the short by Paapa Essiedu and Harris Dickinson – why did you decide to re-cast for the feature length version?
Ng Choon Ping: We did go back to Paapa and Harris but having written the new script, I think we all realised that the characters were very different even though we took inspiration from the original character dynamic. The short was so great because Paapa and Harris were so well cast and they really owned those characters and in the feature, the two characters are recognisable, but actually quite different.
SHF: When we first started writing the feature, we loved working with Paapa and Harris and had a really good time with them and I think we assumed that we would build out from there. However, we were at a dangerous point where there were a lot of things in the feature that were recognisable from the short – the tone, the style and the characters – but they also had to operate so differently and they had to be different characters. They’re much louder, messier, noisier characters in the feature and I think there was a danger for us, and probably everyone involved creatively, of getting stuck on what we’d created before if you go again with the same people.
We talked a lot about the idea of drag. Not just Jules as a drag queen but also Preston as a drag king and how they build the various drags that they wear in the film.
NCP: Everything is writing including casting. When we’re asked how we developed the short to the feature, people talk about writing but really it’s about casting, it’s about re-designing everything. It all has to be thrown out and started all over again.
SHF: When George MacKay and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett came in and we were creating the characters with them we talked a lot about the idea of drag. Not just Jules as a drag queen but also Preston as a drag king and how they build the various drags that they wear in the film. It made the process a lot simpler to begin from scratch and ask who these people are. Everything that came before is out the window. These are new people. Where do we start and how do we build them?
Drag is so integral to the film, not just in the overt performances but the disguises and the masks both characters wear. What research did you do to ensure the authenticity of Aphrodite as a character and the atmosphere of the club?
SHF: We had a drag consultant. We’re quite big drag fans, have watched many seasons of RuPaul, have been to shows and clubs in London and built a personal relationship with it. Jonbers Blonde (Andrew Glover) was our drag consultant and he came in and worked with us and Nathan on set. He was watching on the monitor, checking the makeup and he played a big role in the authenticity of it from an inside out perspective. We wanted Aphrodite to represent a very kind of modern form of drag.
Alongside a drag consultant, you also used an intimacy coordinator which I think is of utmost importance given how fundamental the sex scenes are to the story here. What was the process like working with Robbie Taylor Hunt?
SHF: Working with an intimacy coordinator was so important and essential for us because what the film asks of Nathan and George as actors on the intimacy front is intense. It’s full on, very exposing, and so integral to the storytelling and to that power dynamic. We ensured that there was nothing gratuitous in the film in the form of sex. We’re not hanging on shots for ages, it’s not titillating, it really is the plot of the film. Their relationship is always moving forward through the sex, and so we knew we had to get it right to be able to tell the story correctly.
Having an intimacy coordinator puts a really important barrier between you and the actors so that we’re able to talk to the intimacy coordinator and be completely honest with him about what we need from the scene and what we would like to see without us feeling embarrassed to ask the actors. Furthermore, Robbie, who specialises in queer sex, gets to choreograph with them creatively and they are free to say no without feeling any kind of pressure from us because we’re not there, we will never know what happened in that room. Robbie works with the actors to make sure that they have certain rituals to go in and out of the sex scenes. Much like a fight coordinator, intimacy coordination is a creative job and Robbie specializes in telling a story through sex and intimacy. He’s an expert in thinking about what individual moments of intimacy mean and how you tell a story through them which really adds a lot.
Working with an intimacy coordinator was so important and essential for us because what the film asks of Nathan and George as actors on the intimacy front is intense.
NCP: I think it’s an important shift in the way a set is structured in terms of the power structure. We are shifting away from whatever the director says is right and you have to do whatever they say, to a place where there’s a more democratic, safer, and more professional set. We’re asking actors to do very intimate, inward, raw, exposing stuff and whatever structures you can put in to make them feel safe and not feel exploited is important and creative, it is not just a political move but a creative move as well.
SHF: I never want to make a film without one, really. I think it improves everything, the professionalism, the onset life of the job and the scenes themselves in terms of creativity and storytelling. There’s so much thought that has gone in from Robbie into those sex scenes and into the individual moments within them.
You’ve brought through the intense handheld shots from the short and the fact that the film is very much from Jules’ perspective. Can you tell us more about your camerawork and the visual language you developed?
NCP: Part of the thriller build of the film is very much about withholding information and about only seeing the world the way the protagonist sees it, always being subjective in his head and that really lands quite heavily on the camera work. We relied on our amazing DOP, James Rhodes who operated the camera himself and his handheld work is just beautiful and sensitive.
SHF: Apart from a week where he had COVID and he was in a sealed off tent guiding an operator via a radio.
NCP: You can tell the difference when he’s operating and when he’s not. It was in that moment where we realised we had gotten into a sync with James where we can recognize each other’s work which is a really lovely feeling.
Part of the thriller build of the film is very much about withholding information and about only seeing the world the way the protagonist sees it.
SHF: in terms of the cinematography, the handheldness was important. We had really specific references going into this in terms of genre and films that inspired us. Good Time by the Safdie brothers was a big one for us where there’s a lot of handheld cinematography within, it’s a very dynamic film. We wanted Femme to feel like it’s always moving so you’re always in motion and it carries you along. Alongside that, James lenses Jules differently to how he lenses the rest of the characters so you always feel closer to Jules. There’s a difference between the way we shoot Jules and the way we shoot Preston so you always feel like you’re closer to Jules and Preston is a little bit more objective and further away. And then as the film moves on, there is a point where James shifts the lens and subtly moves Preston slightly closer as we start to get to know him more and as he gains subjectivity within the story. The camera work around him changes so that we feel closer to him as well and then he started using the Jules lenses on Preston.
And there’s another switch that goes on as well in a series of mirroring shots where we see Preston dominating Jules and holding all of the power yet that subtly shifts as the film progresses.
NCP: Well, it’s also the composition that we’re really proud of. There are quite a few mirror compositions that people might or might not see as we weren’t too ostentatious with them, but one that we were really proud of is when Jules first comes out of the flat and Preston is pressing him against the wall. Then later on in the film, outside the club, it’s flipped and Jules is pressing Preston against the wall.
SHF: Even in terms of how James angles on them, it always amazes me how Jules feels so much bigger in that second scene it’s like Nathan’s grown and George has shrunk. It’s very subtle, it’s not doing anything extreme, but it physically feels different in that moment. James knows how to dance with the actors, he’s there but he’s never in their way and he’s always moving with them to find the performance, to find those moments with them.
NCP: In terms of editing, I remember taking out a shot where it’s a two shot and because it’s quite flat we can see the real relative sizes of the two actors. We took it out so that we always feel that Nathan is slightly smaller, if not physically then psychically.
Can you tell us more about the editing process?
NCP: After the first week of shooting, our DOP James went to visit our editor Selina Macarthur in the edit room so that conversation between the DOP and the editor began from the start and there was always feedback between the two of them. That was a really nice loop that they established between the two of them.
SHF: Selina was assembling as we were shooting and we’d have a weekly phone call with her to ask, “What are you missing? What are you enjoying? What’s really working for this?” A lot of the colours and tones were built on set with lighting and our colourist put a pre-grade directly into the camera so what we were seeing was a close approximation of what we wanted. A lot of the edit is about bringing that tension and so much of that is about rhythm and what we see and what we don’t see. With Selina, we worked hard to craft that subjective point of view, feeling like we’re in Jules’s head and taking the handheld camerawork and the dynamism of the cinematography and finding a flow through that in the edit so that we don’t feel like we’re stopping unless we really felt like here’s a point to take a moment. I think it’s a film where the script is what we made, which isn’t always the case. We went into the first assembly, which you’re always terrified to watch, and we were pleasantly surprised. It needed work obviously but it was pretty much there.
NCP: Selina would be mid-edit and we’d be sitting behind her making suggestions and she turned to us and said, “You know what? When I’m ready for you to look at it, I’ll tell you.” So she brought in a bell and when she was ready for us to look she would ring the bell – like Pavlov’s dog!
My heart was definitely in my throat the whole way through the film, right from that hideous violent scene at the very beginning right up until the ending where we are left not knowing what will happen.
NCP: You say the hideousness of the violence – which is the build up and what it represents to the relationship that’s quickly established between Jules and Preston – however if you actually look at the bare bones of the images that we see, there’s only one or two seconds of physical violence. But what you feel is the hugeness of the spiritual and identity stripping that Jules experiences.
SHF: Nathan’s performance was so upsetting. And again that was one of those nights where we didn’t have enough time and he had to throw himself at it. We actually had intimacy coordination there that night as it was so horrible to witness even on set. The real horror lies in the fact there is very little physical violence, there’s a slamming into the wall and there’s a kick but it’s all emotional and psychological violence.
NCP: I think people living in London can really empathise because London is one of those strange places where one moment you feel perfectly safe, you are in your own world, with your friends and the rules you understand, and then you turn a corner and suddenly you’re in a completely different world. You think that you can carry your confidence and your invincibility into the next street but you can’t. That was something that we consciously tried to get across. In a club, you are queen of the world then you step out and go one street down to the off-licence and suddenly you’re in someone else’s territory.
SHF: We worked that really hard with James in terms of cinematography and lighting as well as obviously that performance. The cinematography of Aphrodite’s performance at the beginning stands out from the rest of the film in that it’s shot so differently, it’s the most composed part of the film. You’ve got this camera that spins around and it’s like a music video which is not the tone of the film in general. This is fantasy, Jules is so powerful and looks amazing and then you get into that off-licence and we’re back in handheld mode and the fluorescent strip lighting is so harsh on that makeup, it’s almost like it’s melting it and it suddenly feels so vulnerable and so exposing.
NCP: The stage was the only time we had a camera on tracks and so it feels like Jules is in control. Then suddenly we’re out in the streets it’s handheld and he’s not in control any more.
There’s part of you that imagines in the rest of that sequence, even though we don’t show it on screen.
It’s interesting you mentioned that the violence was so short because in my mind it’s such a big moment.
NCP: The whole encounter is not even 30 seconds. If you drill into it, Jules turns around to punch Preston and misses so Preston grabs Jules and throws him into the wall. Jules then falls to the ground and Preston kicks him. The rest of the encounter is shouting, threatening him with a knife, telling him to take his clothes off, and the horribleness evolves into Jules having to take off his clothes in front of all these laughing boys. It’s made even worse by Preston’s friends telling him to leave it. It wasn’t a black and white group of villains against one victim, it was an encounter gone wrong. A group of lads who think they’re having fun, and then one of them kicks off, and then the rest of them go “Oh my god, this is too much!”
SHF: I also think the jump makes it feel longer than it actually is on the screen because as they chant “Take the clothes off” you see something start to happen, then we cut and suddenly he’s naked on the ground, so there’s part of you that imagines in the rest of that sequence, even though we don’t show it on screen.
NCP: And then we held that big wide shot of him standing up naked in silhouette.
SHF: Maybe that’s the most upsetting shot, the most impactful shot where he’s left alone and you see him scramble to his feet, he’s all hunched over himself.
Femme the short won Best British Short Film at the BIFAs back in 2021 and the feature is now nominated for a slew of awards, how does this full circle moment feel for you?
SHF: It definitely felt like a kind of homecoming moment. BIFA was huge for us because we were looking for our financing at that point and we got the win. It felt like just at the right moment eyes were on us. I remember one of the producers, Sam Ritzenberg saying that someone turned to him when we got the win and said, “Oh, you’ve just made it that much more difficult for everyone to get this film”, as in that people interested in financing the film would have to bid higher or whatever. So BIFA was so important to us in getting the film made.
NCP: And this BIFA nomination for the feature is very important to us to continue to make independent films.
SHF: We’re releasing on December 1st and you know it’s hard when you’re an independent film getting eyes on it, getting people to know about it, and getting people to go to the cinema to see it. I hope these nominations have brought some attention to it that maybe we wouldn’t have had.
And are you going to continue working together? What’s coming next?
SHF: Yeah, we’re doing a mix really, it’s sort of project by project. Me and Ping had been talking about working together for a long time. We were housemates and we had a few different ideas for projects but they’d always been a bit more of one person or a bit more of the other. Femme was the first one that was really like, this is the thing that both of us want to make equally, this feels like the two of us combined. And so we’re staying open to finding that project again, the duo project, and also having our own pieces in the works that are more me or more him that we’re doing solo.
