Plainclothes (2025)

Plainclothes is my kind of film.

I take along my 1940s imaginary screenwriter persona, and she complains about not being able to smoke in cinemas. But I reassure her, reviews have been mostly positive, and it won an award at the Sundance Film Festival. I knew I wanted to see it from the trailer. It is a small budget, independent film, with a small cast, telling a story that could easily be overlooked or dismissed. My kind of film.

Set in 1990s New York it follows a working-class undercover cop, Lucas (Tom Blyth) involved in the entrapment of gay men. It is a moment in gay history that is often ignored. It is just beyond the worst of the AIDs panic, but still an era of shame and closets, suspicion and suppression rather than celebration. It is on the edges of acceptance, and life on the margins is hard.

Lucas is profoundly tormented by his role, and that deepens as he finds himself drawn to one of his targets, Andrew (played by Rusell Tovey).

What matters is not just the tale being told, but the manner of its telling. This is a film that flirts with the tropes of a thriller. Close-up shots of Lucas in action, an emphasis on small details and coded communication. He works with the precision of a sniper.

It also plays with romance. Lucas meets Andrew in the mall while on duty. A meet-cute of covert winks, an undeniable spark, but obstacles from the beginning, so many obstacles. The setting of an old cinema for a first date. Ornate, but crumbling. Out of time romantic.

Then there is the psychological drama. One of the most effective stylistic choices is the blending of different media. Some shots look like home-video, wavering unfocused camera work. Other shots are crisp digital images. Often the camera concentrates on Lucas’s eyes so that you can count the lashes. Then there is the use of superimposed shots to take us from one scene to another or from one memory to another state of mind. This technique serves to remind us that an image can be seen in many ways, even by the same person. When we observe the world, we do so with our own experiences, memories, traumas, concerns and loves. We blend a scene into our own narrative, to try and make sense of the action. Everything is personal. Everything is context.

Video is evidence. But evidence, like argument, is determined by context, can be manipulated, deliberately misread, or unintentionally misleading.

My 1940s screenwriter checks in with me during the credits. Despite the hacking cough of a man a few seats down she has been glued to the screen.

“So, you’re telling me this was written and directed by a woman?”

“Yes, Carmen Eppi.”

“Well maybe there is a future in the movies after all.”

I nod.

This is my kind of film. A character study. A small story that comments on the big and powerful. It produces something both claustrophobic and tenderly liberating.

But it wasn't just that the story was told, it was the way the writer-director chose to tell it.

Plainclothes has a lyrical quality. I’ve said before that some films feel like big novels, spanning years with large casts. Other are like short stories. Intense, character driven. Plainclothes felt like flash-fiction. Glimpses of a story, layered and deeply observed, styled to stay with the viewer, always open to interpretation.

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