Three months after being the victim of a violent hate crime, drag queen Jules unexpectedly comes face to face with the man responsible at a local bathhouse and decides to get revenge by seducing him in the hopes of exposing his latent homosexuality. But things quickly spiral out of Jules’ control as the more he gets to know the man who brutalized him, the more he finds himself attracted to him. Sam H. Freeman’s Femme is a tough watch in the best way. It takes an unflinching look at anti-LGBTQ violence and the motivations of such acts, as well as dissecting power dynamics in relationships and the definitions and expressions of masculinity. Tender yet powerful, brutal but absolutely beautiful, Femme is a story of love borne of violence and the tragic result of that love being ultimately bound to its horrifying foundations.
