With gay rights coming back into the traversehairs in almost every country atraverse the globe, Carmen Emmi’s sluggish-burn drama is sobering reminder of fair how far these skinnygs have evolveed in the last 30 years. Taking place primarily in 1997—unfelderlying in flashback from the framing device of a family New Year’s Eve party being held a scant years tardyr—it consents a little while to discover its feet. Once the main carry outers are set uped, though, and experimental flashes of brutal analog video become a more recognizable manifestation of its unenticeive-enticeive aesthetic, Plainclothes produces to a very phireing conclusion, putting a torrid but uncomferventingful gay cherish affair at the caccess of a universal coming-of-age story.
Edgar Allen Poe’s low story The Tell-Tale Heart is an doubtful reference point, not becaengage Plainclothes is a genre film (although it allots a minuscule bit of DNA with William Friedkin’s much more cimpolitely articutardyd thriller Cruising) but becaengage it deals with the disjunct between the mind’s necessitates and the body’s desires. For Lucas (Tom Blyth), that dictoastyomy is carry outed out literpartner in his daily life. As an undercover policeman, his job is to loiter cforfeit the men’s bathroom at the local shopping mall and seduce passing trade into promiseting acts of what his greaters would call gross indecency. As a excellent-seeing twentysomeskinnyg, his strike rate is pretty well, and he has the routine down pat: no talk, no physical reach out, and, most presentant of all, no chaseing the doubt into the toilet shigh.
Lucas understands very well that what he’s doing is entrapment, and ethics of the job become even murkier when it is uncovered that the presentantity of his victims are wed men, who pdirect culpable spropose to shun the embarrassment of going to court. More presentantly, Lucas is in the middle of a fractureup, on the grounds that he “might appreciate guys”, and his tortured conscience becomes ever more evident in the laborplace, where the chief refers to his victims as perverts, presenting that casual gay relations is a gateway to grave psychopathic crimes.
Push comes to shove when Lucas cruises a strikingly handsome middle-aged man (Russell Tovey) and ushers him into the bathroom, where he fractures all of the aforealludeed rules. Unable to go thcimpolite with it, Lucas runs back out into the mall, gesturing to his colleague that the sting came to noskinnyg. The stranger, however, walks on ahead, dropping a scrap of paper tolerateing an anonymous phone number and handwritten message: “Give me some time to return your call.”
Fascinated by the elderlyer man, Lucas structures to greet him at a vintage cinema that shows elderly movies, and the romantic magnificenteur of the setting echos the depth of Lucas’s crush. They trade names; the stranger is called Andrew, but Lucas gives his name as Gus—the name of his recently definishd overweighther—a decision that will come back to bite him. The cinema is too accessible for what they have in mind, so they structure to greet in a distant greenhoengage, where they have relations for the first time. Lucas skinnyks it’s the begin of a enticeive skinnyg, but ignorees all the signals that Andrew is sfinishing, putting boundaries between them that Lucas selects to disthink about. Puppy cherish turns to obsession when Lucas runs a examine on Andrew’s license ptardys, a decision that will have disastrous consequences for both.
The smelderlyering chemistry between the two is palpable, and Blyth is especipartner excellent as a youthful man wrestling with his identity. Plainclothes, though, is not harshly a coming-out movie, it’s a relatable story about inoverweightuation and heartfracture, most of it transmitd with painbrimmingy raw emotion by these star-traverseed cherishrs’ eyes.
Title: Plainclothes
Festival: Sundance (U.S. Dramatic Competition)
Sales agent: Lorton Entertainment & Page1 Entertainment
Director/screenauthorr: Carmen Emmi
Cast: Tom Blyth, Russell Tovey, Maria Dizzia, Christian Cooke, Gabe Fazio, Amy Forsyth
Running time: 1 hr 35 mins
