By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Get a taste of two gripping, disturbing and transgressive films coming later this year and early 2024.
FEMME (pictured) will be released by Utopia to North American theaters March 22. A double award-winner (Best Director and Outstanding Performance) at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, and playing this Thursday, October 19 at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, it’s a standout debut feature by writer/directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, starring Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (CANDYMAN), George MacKay, Aaron Heffernan, John McCrea and Asha Reid. The synopsis: With his performances as Aphrodite Banks, Jules [Stewart-Jarrett] has a place among London’s celebrated drag artists. One night after a show, he steps out to get some cigarettes and is brutally attacked by a man [MacKay] out with a gang of his friends. Although Jules is able to recover physically, he withdraws from the outside world, traumatized. Months later, he recognizes his attacker by chance in a gay sauna. Without makeup and wrapped only in a towel, Jules is able to approach the other man incognito and find out who he is. He begins an affair with the closeted Preston, with a plan to take his revenge.”
EILEEN is coming from Neon to New York and LA theaters December 1, followed by wide release December 8. Directed by William Oldroyd from a screenplay by Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh, based on Moshfegh’s novel, it stars Thomasin McKenzie (LAST NIGHT IN SOHO), Anne Hathaway, Shea Whigham, Marin Ireland (THE BOOGEYMAN, BIRTH/REBIRTH, THE EMPTY MAN) and Owen Teague. The synopsis: “Set during a bitter 1964 Massachusetts winter, young secretary Eileen [McKenzie] becomes enchanged by the glamorous new counselor [Hathaway] at the prison where she works. Their budding friendship takes a twisted turn when Rebecca reveals a dark secret—throwing Eileen onto a sinister path.”
