PARK CITY, UTAH Jan. 30 (UPI) — Plainclothes, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival, is a powerful drama about coming out in the ’90s. It remains relevant as long as tolerance remains a struggle, for marginalized people or just anyone with compassion.
Lucas (Tom Blyth) is an undercover cop in upstate New York tasked with finding gay men who meet in mall bathrooms. Once they expose themselves, Lucas’s sergeant (Christian Cooke) arrests them.
But Lucas is gay and has not come out to his family or anyone else. His uncle (Gabe Fazio) is homophobic, calling his own gay son a pansy.
When Lucas gets Andrew (Russell Tovey) to the bathroom, he doesn’t go through with the sting. Andrew gives Lucas his number for later.
Set in 1997, the era is evident from the Hi-8 camcorder recording technology, pagers, pay phones and music that plays in the mall.
Lucas and Andrew discuss how tolerance is improving, but not nearly enough for either of them to feel comfortable being open. There is still fear of AIDS and Andrew reminds Lucas to always use protection, which is good advice for anyone sexually active, gay or straight, male or female.
Lucas gradually finds out more and more about Andrew with each encounter, and becomes more of his true self around him. Andrew has been exploring his sexuality in private longer than Lucas so he has helpful advice and tough love because it will be difficult no matter what Lucas does.
Lucas does have supportive people in his life. He has an ex-girlfriend (Amy Forsyth) who supports Lucas coming out. She experimented herself and learned she was not gay but can still support her ex.
Of course, Lucas’s day job brings him into conflict with his own desires. The police force looks down on gay people, calling them perverts.
Writer/director Carmen Emmi frequently intercuts Lucas’s point of view with Hi-8 footage, sometimes the hidden camera footage but other times home movies from his past. Static from the wire Lucas wears on assignment also infiltrates the soundtrack.
It gives the film the feel of raw undercover footage without overdoing it. Lucas and Andrew’s passionate encounters are also intimate without being explicit.
Lucas makes mistakes on his coming out journey. Those frustrations only add empathy for him.
Without spoiling the ending, Plainclothes reaches a satisfying conclusion. Lucas has changed for the better and confronted some of the more hostile people in his life in a cathartic way.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
