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Tiffany Hansen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. In one of the opening scenes of the new thriller Femme, Aphrodite Banks wears a purple satin gown and a diamond-encrusted halter top. She struts to the center stage as this techno beat blasts from the club's sound system.

[MUSIC - Shygirl: Cleo]

Tiffany Hansen: Aphrodite is the drag persona of Jules, a young man and the protagonist. One night after Jules' drag performance, he notices Preston, a closeted man, giving him the eye outside the club. Without giving too much away, Preston ends up violently attacking Jules, leaving him scarred, injured. Months later, Jules encounters Preston again, this time at a gay sauna, intent on revenge. Jules begins an intimate relationship with him.

The revenge plot isn't so clear cut. It's complicated by their mutual attraction. The Guardian called Femme, "an outstandingly intense psychodrama." It's out this Friday at IFC Center. With us now to talk about it is the film's director, Sam Freeman. Hi, Sam-

Sam Freeman: Hi.

Tiffany Hansen: -and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, who plays Jules. Hi, Nathan.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: Hello.

Tiffany Hansen: That scene that we just listened to, I loved that scene. I'm just going to fangirl for a second. Sam, we'll start with you. Femme was originally a short film. It received a lot of buzz. I'm curious what you saw in the short film that you said, "That is really going to make a great feature."

Sam Freeman: We set out actually originally to make a feature film. Ping and I, my co director, who I have been friends for a long time and we'd been living together and we're having this real kick of watching these neo-noir late night thrillers stuff by the Safdie brothers, classic Scorsese films, and were having a conversation about how we loved the genre and we loved the films, but also, as queer artists felt excluded from the area. These films are filled with a very particular hyper masculinity, and queer characters don't center in them. If they are, they're often to the side or they're there for comic relief.

Tiffany Hansen: The thriller genre.

Sam Freeman: It's a very certain kind of thriller. Originally, the seed of the idea was that we just wanted to flip it. We wanted to make a feature film, but neither Ping nor I had ever made film before. A short became our way to prove that we could direct. Through making this short, we discovered this central relationship between these two men who are both struggling, I suppose, or dealing with their relationship to their gender, their sexuality, their masculinity in different ways, and what happens when they headed on a collision course with each other.

Tiffany Hansen: Nathan, specifically, was it the overall story, the idea that you're going to intentionally bump up against this genre of thriller, or was it your character? What was it? Was it the character? Was it all of it?

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: It was pretty much all of it. It was really the script, I think. I get a lot of scripts, I see a lot of scripts, I have a lot of meetings. I just thought the script was so economic, so tight and classical in a sense, of these two characters on a trajectory of tragedy. I just thought the character that was playing Jules is basically playing four different characters. I just thought, as an actor, it's an absolute gift of a role to be able to play someone that dynamic, that nuanced and opposite another character who's equally as nuanced.

It really was the script you have written. You're sitting right next to me [chuckles], but you've written a very tight and wonderful script with just so much depth and so much to play with. That, for me, every film, The Skeleton, the Genesis, the X, is always the script. It starts from there. Everything starts from there.

Tiffany Hansen: Your character is complex, Preston's character, extremely complex. It makes for pretty muddy waters in terms of what each of these characters brings to the table, in terms of their relationship. I guess it may be a question for both of you, but, Sam, how is it to write that? That seems like a very tall order.

Sam Freeman: I think that's why we wanted to do it. I think we were really clear at the beginning that we weren't setting out to make a black and white, overly moralistic movie. We wanted to put two very human characters on the screen in a really murky, difficult situation and explore what happens. I like to think it's a very human film. We weren't interested in making things like, here's a good guy, here's a bad guy.

Tiffany Hansen: Isn't that the trope you get a lot of times in the "revenge thriller?"

Sam Freeman: That's why it's exciting, too. I think the film is not interested in binaries in any sense, binaries of gender or sexuality or ideas like hero and villain. I think the revenge thriller is a very binary genre. You're right. It is often very like the good guy gets an eye for an eye. The good guy gets their reward and the bad guy gets their comeuppance, and I think it felt exciting to take that genre and do something difficult with it.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: I think that, in a sense, because you always say you upended a genre, but I think within that, in terms of the archetype of good person, bad person, I think you usurped that as well. You really did something in terms of it, of what we think of a moral, a moralistic person or something, anything like that, these real big pillars, and you actually said, "No, how about we turn it around?" I think that was the power of the film. The power of the piece is that you do that and you pose those questions.

I've said it a few times. I think the film is amazing, but I also think it's good because it poses questions and it doesn't answer any of them. That's what makes it really powerful, I think.

Sam Freeman: For me, yes, and for me, that's really-- I think all the best stories ask questions. They pose questions rather than making statements like, "This is what the world is." I think they ask challenging questions, hopefully in a really emotionally engaging, sometimes entertaining, sometimes difficult way, but you come out feeling emotionally engaged and you think about it the next day and it stays with you. Those questions stay with you, I suppose.

Tiffany Hansen: There's a way to do that, though, isn't there, that doesn't leave people going, "I don't know what that was about."?

Sam Freeman: No. Hopefully, that's also not what the film does. I hope that's good storytelling. I think the movie is very clear what it's about. I think, you know who the characters are and the plot really leads it. That's what's good to play with these kind of genres as well, it's that you can carry really tricky questions on something that is also viscerally and emotionally engaging for an audience.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: I do love a degree of ambiguity. I think that the film carries that. Again, I think that's what's very powerful. If you think about films like Anatomy of a Fall, it's ambiguous to a fault, and I think it's a very powerful film. I like that there's a degree of, "I don't know, maybe this--" The audience actually does some work and audiences are so, so smart. I think just feeding them things is not always a good idea. I love ambiguity.

Tiffany Hansen: We talk about how the film is distinctly non-binary, but would you-- again, probably a question for both of you. Would you describe the relationship, Nathan, between your character Jules and Preston, who is the person that your character gets involved with as it's a binary love-hate relationship? It's very simplistic, but I guess what I'm getting at is if something is a love-hate relationship, it does feel inherently ambiguous.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: I know what you mean. I wouldn't have said I thought it was a love-hate relationship. I do think it's in a sense of some kind of twisted love story. I think that Jules is compromised in his pure hatred towards Preston. Probably, yes. I think that probably my answer to your question is yes, but I wouldn't have phrased it like that, but, yes, I think definitely.

Sam Freeman: You have anything to say on that?

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: Yes. The relationship goes on a real journey, doesn't it? There's a big arc there. I think what happens to Jules in the beginning in that attack, and we talked a lot about the idea of drag when we were making the film. Obviously, Jules is a drag.

Tiffany Hansen: That's where I wanted to go next. Great.

Sam Freeman: I can lead into it, I suppose.

Tiffany Hansen: Please, do.

Sam Freeman: Jules is stripped of that drag by Preston at the beginning, and a lot of Jules' personal power lies with that drag. It's where he's found his identity. His identity is stripped from the beginning of the film. Actually, outside of the plot mechanics and the specifics, his revenge that he wants to take on Preston is really from a desire to strip Preston's drag from him.

We talked a lot about Preston being, in a way, a drag king. He wears a form of quite toxic hyper-masculinity as a way to protect himself. The thing is, I suppose, as Jules starts to strip these layers of drag from Preston over the course of the film, it reveals something more nuanced and more human and more damaged underneath. That then affects the way that Jules feels about Preston and also feels about the act of revenge that he's trying to--

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: In that sense, the drag is the self.

Tiffany Hanssen: Let's imagine a world where, it's impossible, where Jules is not a drag artist. What I'm getting at is, we know how it now affects their relationship, but how does it make the story, overall, richer to have that character as a drag artist?

Sam Freeman: It operates, I think, for us on two levels. There is, as I said, the thematic idea that this is a film about identity and about gender. Drag really at its core is a performance of identity and of gender. The film is about how we perform ourselves and how we choose performances that give us safety, that give us power, and what happens when those performances are stripped from us. What's underneath? [crosstalk]--

Tiffany Hanssen: -because we're all performing?

Sam Freeman: I think so. I think I'm performing right now.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: Yes, [unintelligible 00:11:18] very well.

[laughter]

Sam Freeman: Of course, it really sat at the core of the conversations when we were making the film and we were talking with Nathan, with all of the actors. There's that very famous RuPaul quote, “We're all born naked and the rest is drag,” which, in a way, sits with this.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: The Shakespeare quote where the world is a stage.

Sam Freeman: Absolutely. Shakespeare and RuPaul.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: I think that's what you were aiming, actually.

Sam Freeman: That's what we were naming.

Tiffany Hanssen: I like it. I see that on the poster, baby. It's Rupaul meets Shakespeare. Nathan, I'm curious how Aphrodite helps Jules on the journey.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: From my understanding, really, drag is an expression. You can say it's as an expression of someone's interior. I think that Aphrodite is Jules at his most empowered, his most celebratory, and gives Jules license and a voice to do things and say things that Jules is unable to reconcile out of drag. I think you are feeling most powerful in those moments-- It was Jules's birthday. There's lots of different things that-- Again, it's very classical. I think you started it in a very classical way of like the height of someone's power. To rip that from someone at that time is the most painful, is the most awful thing to do.

Tiffany Hanssen: Let's hear-- Oh, sorry. Can I--

Sam Freeman: I was going--

Tiffany Hanssen: Go ahead.

Sam Freeman: Just on the drag. That's your question. I suppose the other thing is that drag. It's an important plot device-

Tiffany Hanssen: Sure.

Sam Freeman: -within the film because it's also the reason why Preston doesn't recognize Jules when he meets him again, which is also quite Shakespearean.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: It's very Shakespearean.

Tiffany Hanssen: It is. Somebody can write their dissertation on this. Let's hear from Aphrodite. This is Jules and Preston continuing their secret affair. We find Jules in a bathtub, friends by his side consoling him. Let's take a listen.

Jules: It was just so powerful. It was confusing. It was like she was the real me and I was the performance. It was like I wasn't worth that anymore, like a let down.

?Preston: You didn't let anyone down, babe.

Tiffany Hanssen: Nathan, talk about that crisis that's happening there. First of all, can I give you a two-part question?

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: Yes. I'll attempt to answer.

Tiffany Hanssen: Then second part is, the voice we heard there at the end is a member of Jules's chosen family. Tell us about both of those.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: It's funny because, at the moment, I have an issue where I can't remember the film as an actor. I can remember George, I can remember yourself, Sam, and I remember different things, but I can't remember myself performing anything. I almost remember it as if it were real. I think that at its height performance, you bring a lot of yourself to something and you lend a lot of yourself to something. You also learn and you are informed by that character.

I think Jules, in that instance, is saying that he feels whole as Aphrodite. If you look at [unintelligible 00:15:19] , it's burning a lot of-- Kids in the ballroom were living the life that they wanted to live. They'd grown into that life. I think he feels really whole as Aphrodite and hasn't honored her by not doing enough since the attack. I think it's a common thing, actually, to go somewhere else. I think it's really common. Second part, Tiffany, give me the second part again.

Tiffany Hanssen: Chosen family.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: Chosen family. Again, I think it's very, very common. I think, in queer society, oftentimes, if you think about kids that have run away from home, have bad home lives, work lives, whatever that would be, that they choose their family of necessity. They choose who will love, who accept them, who will take care of them. It's incredibly important. We had a few scenes that I don't think actually made it into the film, unfortunately, but they're really to show how important chosen family is. I think we all do it in many different ways.

Tiffany Hanssen: Can you give me a quick answer for this question, Sam? The clock is ticking.

Sam Freeman: Yes.

Tiffany Hanssen: What do you hope queer audiences will take from this film?

Sam Freeman: In a way also, I hope that queer audiences feel like we are expanding the cannon of queer film. I've talked to a lot of people who've really felt like queer thrillers have been something that we haven't seen a lot of. That actually, queer film sits within a genre of its own and sometimes we feel that we're kept within a box. I think, there are some films coming out at the moment that stand alongside us, like Love Lies Bleeding. It's an exciting time to expand the stories that we are allowed to tell as queer artists.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: Rotting in the Sun as well. Rotting in the Sun came up last year. It's amazing.

Tiffany Hanssen: We've been talking with Sam Freeman, co-director of the new film Femme. See, I keep wanting to do that. Femme, thank you-- and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, who plays Jules, thank you so much for your time.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: Thank you, too.

Sam Freeman: Thank you.

Tiffany Hanssen: We appreciate it. Coming up tomorrow on All Of It, a conversation about food. It's our Food for Thought. We'll talk with Anna Gass, author of a new cookbook, Italian Snacking. Snacking on All Of It tomorrow. Join us for that.

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