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It’s Desire vs. Domination in the Intensely Erotic Femme
The razor’s edge between pleasure and pain gives this transgressive thriller its potency.
Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s knotty feature takes on sex in all its definitions and connotations — the biological identifier, the physical act between two bodies — to question how fixed our identities are. Much of Femme is unflashy by necessity; it’s a story whose emotional admissions and racy rendezvous take place primarily in an SUV, in abandoned parking lots, or in a dark wood, anywhere that privacy is not quite guaranteed but the interruption of it is an aphrodisiac. It’s a whirlwind of psychosexual teasing that feels like the film edging us ever closer to the satisfaction of understanding exactly what motivates Preston and Jules’s smutty one-upmanship, and in realizing for ourselves the appeal of submission, acquiescence, and consent.
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