Plainclothes

Remember when George Michael was arrested in 1998 for lewd conduct in a men’s restroom? Carmen Emmi’s Sundance award-winning debut takes us back to a similar setting, just one year earlier. Lucas (Tom Blyth of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) is a young cop assigned to crack down on public indecency. Undercover and dressed in street clothes, he is sent to a shopping mall restroom to entrap men by flirting at the urinal, then arrest them for inappropriate conduct. Lucas is committed to the job, but this “special assignment” takes a toll. Perhaps it’s because he is grappling with his own identity, buried desires, and a fractured family life. Things grow even more complicated when Lucas meets Andrew, played by Russell Tovey (Being Human, Looking), during one of his sting operations. Their connection begins in the bathroom but doesn’t end there. Could this encounter change the lives of two closeted men? Part psychological thriller, part cultural excavation, Plainclothes not only grips with its slow-burn tension, it also offers a haunting portrait of pre-emancipation queer life. Shot in a raw, ’90s camcorder-inspired style and set to a perfectly era-specific soundtrack, the film dives into the pre-emancipation queer world of sex, lies, and videotape.