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“It was a relief to have an intimacy coordinator” – Directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping talk FEMME

A still from FEMME

Queer cinema is on the rise, and it'd be easy to thank Moonlight for this. But the truth is cinema has always been a place for the LGBTQ+ community, but now it's not just confined to worthy Oscar-type films. Building on their BAFTA-nominated short film, directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping have made a searing thriller about drag-queen and queer man Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), who is attacked one night while in drag by a thug called Preston (George McKay). Months later, Jules sees Preston in a gay sauna and decides he wants revenge, and a difficult courtship follows.

It's a dark film, and one that challenges what we think of victims and aggressors, but an important story for those who are non-straight. FILMHOUNDS sat down with the two directors to dig deeper under the surface.

What challenges do you face when you're turning a BAFTA-nominated short film into a feature-length film?

Sam H. Freeman:  I suppose the biggest challenge is to not get caught up in trying to extend the short film into something that is longer, which is the first thing you sort of think to do. “Well this went well, and we've got funding, let's go further.” It was slightly different because we have concepted… conceptualised as a feature.

Ng Choon Ping: Conceived.

SHF: We conceived it as a feature, and conceptualised! I wasn't wrong. But thanks. We originally conceived it, conceptualised it, concepted it as a feature but having spent time on it as a short you go “Okay do we extend afterwards, do we explain before” which can be dangerous because when a short film works it's usually because you've told the whole story, and it's the right length for what it is. So it took us longer to figure out what it is in the longer form, and what we did was to look at the short and at its core what can we take from what we made, what's interesting, which is about two characters who are both in some way struggling with or confronting sexuality and masculinity and gender. Then we went for a similar sort of visual style, our genre reference was the same, but apart from that we threw everything out and started again.

The film's opening assault is really harrowing, how do you go about filming something so intense and making sure your actors feel they're in a safe environment?

NCP: We work very closely with an intimacy coordinator and the choreographer. It was really important that yes, we went for authenticity but that everyone feels they can discuss what something should look like or proceed, and that the actors feel like they can say no to something. That was the structure of making moments like this. But, also, in terms of the art of it, we studied really rigorously how thrillers make their moments, and making sure we got the shots, to make sure that we're always keeping the adrenaline up. When shooting it it was very important that we were subjective, we were always in Jules' point of view, and we had handheld photography. The audience sees the world when he sees the world. We didn't have any establishing shots where the audience experiences something before he does, that was to keep us with him, so we're surprised and stressed with him.

You mention intimacy coordinators, there's been a lot of discussion in the industry of sex scenes and the need for them. How did you both find working with Robbie Hunt and the actors – there are a few sex scenes and they're quite aggressive. How did that work?

SHF: It was a relief to have an intimacy coordinator. For us it was a preferred way to work, you do all of your work with the coordinator — what do we need to get out of the scene? What's important here? You don't have to have what could be a very difficult conversation with actors where you want them to do something but you don't want them to feel like they can't say no to you. With an intimacy coordinator, you can push for the story you want to tell while letting the actors express themselves in that safe environment where they are allowed to state their boundaries, or say no to the director and not feel like they're in any way messing with the film. What Nathan and George are putting on the screen is so personal and exposing and so both morally and for the good of the work you want the most comfortable and safe environment. I just think an intimacy coordinator is integral to that.

NCP: I think Robbie gave us a really good structure and language to speak of it because it can be embarrassing to talk about it. So he gave us a language to talk about it as art and not the blurring of lines of what you're asking for.

There's been an increase in people demanding that there are intimacy coordinators, do you think it will just become an industry standard like a stunt coordinator?

NCP: I hope so, I think it's a matter of pride that people go “I don't need this additional creative input,” you know they're brave enough to go in raw or intimate, it's almost like a machismo. I think in much the same way there are safety structures, while before people might feel safe to fling themselves off a cliff without stunt people, it's a step forward.

SHF: And Robbie brought a creative role in the same way that a stunt or a fight choreographer does. Part of Robbie's job is knowing how to choreograph sex, in the same way you wouldn't just choreograph a fight yourself, you bring in an expert. They bring in original ideas that feel very specific to this film, so you don't feel like you're seeing the same thing played over and over. Robbie brought a lot to the sex scenes that felt really intimate.

In the beginning, we see Jules perform a drag act, and there's been an increase in drag acts in the mainstream – helped by RuPaul's Drag Race – but there's been an equal amount of backlash to it from right-wing people accusing drag acts of being child abusers. How important was it to portray a drag queen as a fully-rounded person?

SHF: It was very important, I guess when we wrote it we never really spoke about it in those terms. I think it is important to show a drag queen who is fully rounded. A lot of the conversation around drag queen story hours is just so ridiculous to me. We have such a long tradition of drag acts in entertainment for child-like pantomimes. It's been around. I often think a lot of the criticism is not honest, it's just homophobia.

Completely agree.

SHF: Yeah! Calling drag time sexualising children is ridiculous, it's just people in a costume reading a story. It's been such a tradition for such a long time, but because you give it a different name, you call it drag queen and because we know that they are queer, they assume it's something that's dangerous. It makes me angry.

When it's Christopher Biggins in panto, or women playing Peter Pan it's fine, but when it's young, sexually free, usually queer men — suddenly everyone has a problem with it.

NCP: I suppose you know you're doing something right when there's a right-wing backlash.

The film deals with revenge porn, when you're talking about revenge porn and deepfakes, there are new laws in place, it's such an emotionally charged topic. Were you ever worried there would be a point where the audience loses sympathy for Jules?

SHF: Obviously Jules is driven by such rage, it's such an emotional response from him. The revenge porn is, for him, stripping away a part of Preston's identity in the same way his identity as a drag queen, and his power was literally stripped off his body by Preston. This question… we'd probably have a different response to it if Jules went through with it, actually posting the video online. It's the intent but ultimately takes the high road and is unable to do what was done to him. It's dark, it comes from a very dark place and we didn't want to shy away from that desire within him to hurt back.

NCP: I think in plotting the film there was this balancing act, because it is revenge, and revenge is only satisfying if you feel like it is exactly right. You do exactly the same amount that was done to you. So in plotting out the initial incident, we first thought we didn't want too much violence, we didn't want it to stray into sensationalism. The initial idea is that it was a small event, but in balancing out what Jules decides to do, and to not lose sympathy for him, we had to increase the intensity of the initial triggering incident.

SHF: At the same time we tried to stray away from an overly moralistic film or telling an overly moralistic story. We try to tell these characters truthfully and have them behave in a way that is how real people behave. We weren't really playing with the binaries of hero and villain, I think it's important in film to explore the humanity of people who do terrible things. Particularly today people are scared of those things, they want things to be very clear-cut. The good guys get what they deserve, the bad guys are punished, the politics are very clean and simple, and I don't know what that really achieves. We tried to be bold with that and push for uneasy answers.

NCP: And just the build on what you said, it almost feels like queer films or any film that comes out of a minority or marginalised community or group, there seems to be a different standard. It's like the protagonist has to be a role model. There's a pressure for these queer characters or minority characters to be a role model for the community so the community isn't polluted by dark or ambitious action. We think that's very limiting, and it's limiting in trying to realise a full human being. These characters do the wrong thing, they can be destructive and negative, as well as positive and strong. So, that was a limitation we really pushed back against. To tell a fully rounded person.

SHF: There's been a trend in storytelling for quite a while where anti-hero leads, or complex heroes quite often it feels —

NCP: Only straight people.

SHF: Yeah, there's a limit on who is allowed to claim that. Female lead characters have a harder time, or minority characters are expected to star in a promotion video. We're not allowed difficult feelings. We knew that when we went in, trying to subvert that within the genre. We were referencing a hyper-masculine, super-macho style of storytelling and trying to tell our story.

FEMME is released on December 1, 2023.