Metacritic reviews

The main characters of Femme are more than one-dimensional representations of the part they play in society. They are complex human beings, filled with contradictions and trying to get by despite past traumas.

The film’s outsides, all darkness and furtive lighting, seem to pour out of the characters’ insides, where pockets of trauma live in their own self-erected shadows.

The directors’ first joint feature is a tremendously effective revenge movie; a picture that reframes the neo-noir by harnessing a hate crime and diverting its power into a thrillingly transgressive erotic thriller.

A pair of sensational performances by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (“Candyman”) and George MacKay (“1917”), locked in a nervy duet as two men with virtually nothing in common but their sexuality, represents the chief selling point for this stylish, commendably uncompromising fusion of genre fireworks and measured, thoughtful character study.

George MacKay and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett utterly thrill in this sexually charged, suspense-filled watch. Don’t let this one pass you by.

The film avoids a cut-and-dried triumphalism for something more slippery and, perhaps, more meaningful, too.

Femme fascinatingly taps into the radical possibilities of the sartorial as narrative device, exploring the tabooed nuances of queer subjectivity and muddying the lines between gay and trans in the way that lived experience tends to do.

Subtlety proves a scarce commodity as the debuting duo chops at this cautionary tale until its fragile narrative bones are fully exposed, dialogue stripped of any valuable nuance.

Both Stewart-Jarrett and MacKay do a remarkable job wrestling with their character’s inner and outer conflicts, but so much of “Femme” is about the pain of queer life, that it leaves out its joy.

Faltering storytelling and sloppy visual technique aside, the pas de deux of tenderness and violence, passivity and aggression between Stewart-Jarrett and MacKay keeps you watching, with both actors mostly overcoming the clichés in the way their characters are conceived. But Femme ends up being less subversive than it seems to think it is.