Gay-themed Thriller Fails to Surprise

There’s a beauty to the art of cruising for sex that is irresistibly cinematic: the gestures, the wordless gazes, the seedy venues. It’s why any number of queer filmmakers have chosen to depict it so lovingly, and exploited it for everything from creating an intellectual argument dissecting its appeal to imagining the horrifying scenarios that can unfold when two strangers meet under such vulnerable circumstances. They’re also, obviously, offering audiences something to pleasure themselves with: The fact that it’s illicit only makes it all the more erotic.

Police officers have also exploited the appeal of these sexual encounters for decades — the exact hook of Carmen Emmi’s feature debut Plainclothes. The title refers to when officers wear civilian clothes on duty, which is precisely how Lucas (Tom Blyth) works a mall bathroom looking for men to expose themselves to him. As a concept alone, diving into the mentality of a police officer who entraps queer men is the basis for an ideal character study. When your job involves entrapment, what happens when you give into the lust (and possibly love) that you harbor for one of the men you sought to catch?

For Lucas, this man is Andrew (Russell Tovey), who is both intriguing as a performer and naturally appealing to the eye in this film. There’s a quiet confidence to his every move, even when it’s clear that he doesn’t have control of a given situation, and it’s easy to see why someone like Lucas would be drawn to him. Blyth’s performance is like a frayed nerve, all anxiety and internalized homophobia, until he falls head over heels for Andrew. The best moments of the film are those in which the two men navigate each other in their first few brief encounters, as the weight of being closeted ideally balances the casualness of the relationship.

One might expect Emmi to make his film a sort of self-analysis of character and morality, diving into the hypocrisy of Lucas’ job with his lifestyle. But, sadly, Plainclothes isn’t interested in such things. It’s a film that is comfortable sidelining its most intriguing feature – that of conflicted identity – for a far more mediocre and traditional romantic drama with only the barest elements of a thriller. Lucas is torn between work and home, love and work, family and sex, and everything about it just feels so obvious.

Many beats of the narrative – from the family gathering where people are sidestepping secrets to falling in love with the first guy to sleep with you – feel done to death in gay cinema. As a result, Plainclothes feels like a relic of the exact era it takes place in (the 90s, which you can tell by the very amusing use of OMC’s “How Bizarre” as soon as the film kicks off). And those traditional moments work just fine, for the most part. But when it leans into the job is when Plainclothes feels most engaging, both formally and narratively.

Emmi and DP Ethan Palmer try to mask the lack of cohesion by shifting between Hi-8 footage that’s intended to represent Lucas’ anxieties and perspective and digital photography that’s meant to mimic 16mm. (The film is also rife with slow zooms that recall the very surveillance job at its core). On a purely aesthetic level, both are beautiful, save for the few times when the film relies on glitch effects in the editing. But it’s easy to get distracted by the format shifts after a while, making them feel less like a thoughtful choice intended to reflect Luke’s tortured interiority and more of a hollow aesthetic gimmick. For each inspired moment — like intercutting a sex scene with Lucas’ family life — there comes one that just feels like a dated music video with no time to delve deeper. (And, frankly, George Michael already made the best music video that uses surveillance aesthetics to address being arrested for having public sex.)

But Plainclothes has 97 minutes to get into the ethical conundrum that is entrapping queer men when you yourself are a queer man. The film even opens with the law enforcement code of ethics quoted on screen: “Honest in thought and deed both in my personal and official life, I will be exemplary in obeying the law and the regulations of my department.” Instead of dissecting that code, Lucas never grapples with the weight of what he’s done beyond the slightest hint of guilt for his past arrests in the face of newfound love.

Perhaps it is unfair to judge Plainclothes against something like William Friedkin’s Cruising, but it’s nearly impossible not to draw the comparison. For all the criticism that came at Cruising, it remains an excellent exploration of what it means to perform in a way that this picture can’t quite accomplish. Plainclothes is clearly studied about these situations, but beyond scenes recreating what it was like for officers to capture men on video, there isn’t much engagement here with such a rich topic as how the police manipulate gay men. Carmen Emmi has made a perfectly watchable debut feature, but it’s a shame that it wastes the overwhelming potential of its premise.

Plainclothes debuts in select theaters on September 19 from Magnolia Pictures.