Plainclothes Review: A Haunting Romance

Anchored by powerful lead performances and audacious directing, Plainclothes tells a haunting romantic tale that spotlights painful, difficult truths.

So, I did some research before seeing the film and confirmed that yes, it’s been an actual practice even decades after consensual, private gay sex was legalized. I don’t know who to be more disappointed in: the world at large, or myself for not instantly believing it.

Thankfully, in addition to making me aware of these stings in the first place, Plainclothes is just an excellent film in its own right. Tom Blyth (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) plays Lucas, one of the cops partaking in such stings. His next target is the sophisticated Andrew (Russell Tovey, Looking) in what should be another straightforward setup and arrest. That is, until Lucas catches feelings for Andrew. He thrusts himself into the deepest, most intimate of affairs, forcing both men to fight against immense pressure from the law, their professions, and their personal lives.

Unsurprisingly, the chemistry between Blyth and Tovey is the centerpiece of Plainclothes, and they are devastatingly magnetic together. Lucas has a young, unsure approach to something so forbidden that he’s unsure if he can pursue it even in private, which mixes and swirls steamily with Andrew’s more mature, assured, quietly brazen allure. Even beyond broader societal discrimination and ridicule, both men have reasons why they shouldn’t be with one another – Lucas is compromising his career, and Andrew is married – but when they’re together through physical passion and tangible whispers, every outside factor is forgotten. By the characters and maybe even by the enraptured viewer.

Russell Tovey’s performance puts his character’s desire and hidden sadness in – no pun intended – plain sight even at his most reserved, channeling Phillip Seymour Hoffman-type nuanced energy into one of the year’s best supporting performances. But Blyth, who has much more weight to carry, is even better. He relentlessly embodies a stifled, suppressed, frustrated, anxious, and downright frightened younger man who feels the walls of his own identity and actions slowly close in around him. And you endure it the entire time, as I can’t think of a scene in the movie that doesn’t revolve around him.

Then there’s first-time director Carmen Emmi, whose confidence and tact far exceed his experience. Plainclothes leans fully into its grainy, dirty indie nature with grittily realistic acting and cinematography (courtesy of Ethan Palmer), looking much more like raw documentary footage from the 90s than a fictional narrative. And that’s just the film’s default look, not including the times when it actively mimics an old video format to show memories – distant and recent – from Lucas’s past. In a brilliant choice, it even intercuts between styles within the same shot to show that what you’re seeing was once a present moment but also now a memory.

Not only does this visually get across how much the events have stayed with and haunted Lucas, but the rampant array of different times in his life is clashing before our eyes just as it likely is within his own mind. The main story is, after all, framed as one bigger memory that Lucas experiences during a family dinner months afterwards. He’s forced to endure the weight of traumatic suppression on top of completely separate conflicts that also demand he keep his true feelings down, and thanks to Blyth’s performance, you’re waiting for him to finally explode every second you watch him.

When you’re also subjected to the aggressive sound design and editing that bring you into the sensory pain of Lucas’s heightening uncertainty, Plainclothes often comes across as a warped, sensual fever dream, where everything somehow feels real and unreal. You’re alienated, isolated, yet placed squarely in front of everyone. Which, I imagine, is Emmi’s way of putting you as squarely in the shoes of people like Lucas and Andrew as possible, whose very desires are dangerous on levels many people couldn’t imagine.

Both lead characters are giving up pieces of themselves to live the lives they’re unallowed to. Those pieces include full transparency with others, fidelity with a spouse, and even how comfortable they are with each other and how long they can last. Even if someone’s not on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, there’s a strong chance they’ll relate to the unshakeable anxiety that comes with diverging from the norm in a world where people may seek to judge and prosecute you for it. 

Plenty of movies have gotten that crisis across, but none quite in the way Plainclothes does. It truly feels like you’re witnessing these themes for the first time. And, if you also didn’t know these kinds of stings happened, you likely are. But whether you did or didn’t, this is an audacious, atypical, crushing film that slowly simmers to an explosive boil. I will warn that its many stylistic irregularities will put some people off. But if you’re on its wavelength, you’re in for one of the year’s absolute best films.

Plainclothes will be released in select US theatres on September 19, 2025 and in UK cinemas on October 3.