Writer-director Carmen Emmi’s debut feature Plainclothes, which world premiered at Sundance 2025, winning the festival’s US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast, has an enticing premise. In Syracuse, Upstate New York, a young police officer, Lucas (Tom Blyth), has been placed on undercover “plainclothes” duty tasked with entrapping gay men. The assignment involves lingering around the public restroom at the local mall, encouraging any men whom he suspects are there to cruise to expose themselves, and then pointing them out to his colleague to be arrested for lewd conduct. While on the job, he falls for one of his targets, silver fox Andrew (an excellent Russell Tovey), who believes that Lucas is genuinely there to cruise and leaves him with his phone number.
Before that, in an establishing scene of entrapment, there is a heady mix of attraction, denial, and guilt as Lucas gives a man the eye, knowing that the end result will see him criminally charged. He is a traitor to his fellow queer men whose lives he is potentially destroying by his actions. Blyth conveys all of this emotional weight beautifully with his expressive face and his nuanced, captivating performance is the beating heart of the film. Lucas’ anxiety and shame are also evoked by the film’s distinctive visual language. The image shifts from what looks like CCTV video footage to home video footage (shot on a Sony Hi8 camera), and then back to digital film, flipping between them with frenetic editing by Erik Vogt-Nilsen.
Cinematographer Ethan Palmer frequently incorporates zoom shots, evoking surveillance as well as Lucas’ troubled internal state and his sense of paranoia, while also giving things a 1970s thriller vibe. In this initial sequence, it proves an effective approach that is unsettling and looks visually arresting (pardon the pun), but as the technique continues throughout the film, its purpose begins to feel muddled—or at least diluted from overuse—and it risks detracting from the emotional potency of the strong acting performances.
Another visual mode employed throughout is contrasting aspect ratios to denote two different timeframes. It moves from a standard 16:9 wide format for scenes set in the film’s present day to 4:3 for an earlier period when most of the action unfolds. 4:3 proves to be a good fit for that material—some of which takes place in the mall restroom—as it forces Palmer’s shots to be tight, heightening the sense of intimacy as well as the protagonist’s claustrophobic anxiety, while the texture of the video footage is evocative. Taken all together though, there is too much going on visually, which pulled me out of the central narrative at times, took the edge of the tension, and left me feeling detached from the characters. That is a pity, because the story itself is an intriguing one and the dynamics between the leads is absorbing.
We learn that the undercover protocol means that Lucas is not allowed to go into a bathroom stall with his targets, so when he does so with Andrew we know that it is a bold step, putting his lust ahead of duty. Although nothing happens physically between them during that first encounter, the sexual tension is palpable and every subsequent scene between the two characters—clothed or otherwise—is piping hot and Blyth and Tovey’s on-screen chemistry is magnetic. Emmi strikes a refreshingly neutral tone when it comes to tea-rooming—or cottaging as it is known in the UK—and despite Lucas’ own lingering discomfort with being queer, and the police force’s condemnation, there is no sense of authorial judgement, or sensationalism, about public restroom sex between men.
Lucas is clearly not out at work, or to his family, including his grieving mother Marie (Maria Dizzia) and his homophobic uncle (Gabe Fazio). Touchingly, we do see him share that he is attracted to men with his accepting ex-fiancée Emily (delicate and engaging work by Amy Forsyth) whom he remains close to. Lucas is a powder keg of emotions, and Emmi deftly captures the turmoil of being closeted and blighted by internalized homophobia, but things turn jarringly melodramatic in the final frames of the film. The warm and charming Andrew initially appears to be far more at ease and self-accepting, but we learn that he too is deeply closeted and married to a woman.
With Lucas reluctant for his prying neighbours to catch a glimpse of Andrew at his apartment, the pair decides to meet for a matinee at a majestic movie palace. Emmi and Palmer make the most of this stunning location and as the two men’s bodies draw closer it is achingly romantic as they yearn to touch one another, while their next meeting finds them curled up on the floor of a greenhouse. Although Andrew protests that he is only into no-strings meetups and doesn’t see men more than once, their time together feels much more like a date than a hookup and a tangible sense of connection quickly builds between them, leaving Lucas wanting something more substantial and lasting.
Although it is set in 1997, Plainclothes has more of a late 70s/early 80s vibe and aesthetic to it. Given Lucas’ line of work, particularly the assignment he is on, the resurgence of societal homophobia as a result of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the fact that he is still coming to terms with who he is, being discreet about his sexuality is understandable. However, had the film been set during an earlier time period, the urgency for the protagonists to remain closeted might have had even more poignancy.
Ultimately, although the overwrought visuals detract from the impact of the film, this is still a worthwhile watch, especially for Blyth and Tovey’s first-rate work, and Emmi should be commended for being gutsy enough to experiment.
By James Kleinmann
Plainclothes world premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2025. Read more LGBTQ+ highlights at Sundance 2025.