“Never Kill a Femboy on the First Date” set to premiere in Smithfield

When Lee-Loi Chieng sat down to write the script for his upcoming short, Never Kill a Femboy on the First Date, he was looking to challenge himself as a filmmaker, he says.

Chieng’s first few film credits showed his niche was in comedy. He wrote, directed and acted in the queer rom-com short Meeting His Parents, and worked on the visual effects team for the very literally named horror-comedy Cocaine Bear.

Then, as he started 2023, he was commissioned to write a comedy-drama, he says.

It was great, Chieng says, but he was aware he needed to push himself. “It’s an industry where you can’t keep going to people with the same thing.”

With that thought bubbling at the back of his mind, he penned this latest work, a tense and chaotic 17-minute erotic thriller about a Gaelic football player hooking up with a crossdresser in a dark secluded car park.

Telling this story about cruising was a reaction to how he had developed as a writer, he says. “And I was super interested in that world.”

The idea was eventually picked up by Virgin Media, and he pitched it to director Oonagh Kearney.

She didn’t get to see a script right off, Kearney says. “He pitched it to me verbally, describing its lights, its darkness and intimacy, and I was quite terrified by it.”

As the pair recall the initial process over a Zoom call on Monday afternoon, the short is less than a month away from its premiere in the Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield.

It is set to be screened as part of the Dublin International Film Festival on 24 February, before a televised premiere on Virgin Media One on 1 March.

Kearney says she is still surprised about what the cast and crew pulled off in realising this story. “I mean, whether you’re attracted to what is onscreen or not, something like this just hasn’t really been seen in Irish filmmaking before.”

The erratic and erotic

Never Kill a Femboy on the First Date opens on an atmospheric night behind a GAA clubhouse.

A man named Chris (played by Darragh Cushen) waits nervously in his car, parked in the shadows. A figure in snakeskin boots approaches.

The figure, a male crossdresser in a blonde wig named Min, enters the vehicle. Min refers to Chris by the semi-anonymous username he chose for a social-media hook-up site.

Chris is visibly uneasy about his sexuality. He is anxious, almost stand-offish as he talks to Min, played by first-time actor Hansun Lamb.

As this first intimate encounter becomes awkward for Min, Chris proposes they go into the sports club’s changing room.

It is a tense first impression. A sparse electric guitar sets a moody film-noirish tone, while a dog barks in the distance and the wind rustles the leaves.

The clatter of an empty beer can follows the sight of three young men marching in the pair’s direction, shouting and whooping.

While Chris and Min hide in the building’s dressing room, the trio voyeuristically peer through the window watching them have sex. But, once one of the guys finds out Min is a cross-dresser, his shock turns to aggressive disgust.

The ensuing conflict comes in waves as Min attempts to improvise his way out of a dangerous situation, first by flirtatiously trying to charm the erratic gang until things go awry.

It’s a volatile narrative, propelled by chance, luck and snap decisions. Chieng says he wanted to create something uncontrollable based on both research and experience. “It needed to come from truth.”

“It’s night-time,” he says. “These lads are drunk, or on drugs, and people have to be smart in those situations to calm someone.”

“It’s not about fighting or escaping,” he says. “It’s being strategic and trying to delve into their sweeter side, calming them that way.”

Chieng uses these nail-biting moments to examine the nuances to these antagonists surrounding Min, he says. “What is their ideology? What is their view on sexuality? Because someone is dressed like that, do they see you as a physical threat?”

“Their first instinct isn’t necessarily to bat him down,” he says.

Showing reality

While shot on the grounds of a Gaelic football club in Gormanstown on the Meath-Fingal border, the filmmakers weren’t looking to specifically comment on GAA itself, Kearney says.

It’s an institution with very openly queer figures, she says, “and patriarchal, and also the heart of the community”.

Chieng and Kearney dig into the complex sexual identities that exist in such a stereotypically straight environment. They refrain from drawing a straightforward conclusion.

Ultimately, what the film is talking to the viewer about is the idea of queerness, says producer Aoibhín Murphy. “It teaches about different communities that we know about, that we might be a part of, and acknowledges this violence.”

Murphy says it’s a call to action. “You know, ‘Do better’. Let’s commend the people who enjoy their lives, make their choices, and aren’t judged or penalised for them.”

It is reflective of the lived experience of transgender people or cross-dressers, Chieng says. “They’re not going to stop. They’re not doing anything wrong. You’re entitled to get their rocks off, but this is just the danger you encounter cruising or hooking up in GAA clubs.”

“It’s just the reality of the situation,” he says.