Plainclothes (2025)
Written and directed by Carmen Emmi
Who determines what is and isn’t a crime? It feels strange to look back and realize that being queer in public was still criminalized in a variety of ways well into the 21st century in America. The specific crime highlighted in this film was known as “cottaging” in the UK and refers primarily to same-sex sexual encounters between men in public spaces like restrooms or parks. While I can understand the desire to prohibit public sex, since it involves people who have not consented to witness it, the laws were far more focused on marginalizing and punishing gay men for wanting intimacy. The reason so many men used these public spaces was because they were hiding their sexuality, and the reason for that was simple: if their homosexuality became common knowledge, they would be ostracized from society. This leads me to see these sorts of stings as little more than a way to further torment an already persecuted group of people.
Plainclothes is a 1990s-set romantic thriller drama directed by Carmen Emmi that follows Lucas (Tom Blyth), a young undercover police officer in Syracuse, New York, who is assigned to lure and arrest gay men as part of entrapment operations. Haunted by personal turmoil, including his father’s death and a recent breakup, Lucas’s conflicted life takes an unexpected turn when he meets Andrew (Russell Tovey), a man he is meant to apprehend, and finds himself drawn into a secret, intimate connection that forces him to confront his own identity and the moral cost of his work. As their relationship deepens and pressure mounts from both his department and his family, Lucas must navigate the collision of duty and desire, culminating in a tense New Year’s Eve reckoning where everything he has kept hidden threatens to explode.
There were many 2025 films I went into with moderate expectations, and most of them lived up to that. However, a small handful surprised me with how effectively they balanced character-driven drama with bold stylistic choices. Plainclothes is one of them, presenting a gorgeous mix of analog audio-video textures and non-linear storytelling.
Both are accomplished through tightly edited montages that use era-accurate lo-fi video footage intercut with modern high-definition images. The result places the audience inside Lucas’s mind—a mess dominated by cognitive dissonance about his job and his sexuality. The intensity of these moments shifts over time, reflecting Lucas’s gradual coming to terms with who he is, though his inability to live openly becomes the true obstacle in his path. If this feels incoherent at times, that is the intended effect.
A major part of Lucas’s struggle isn’t just being closeted, but the harm he inflicts on queer men through his work. He spends time in a mall with another officer, connected via earpiece. Lucas will bait men after making eye contact, heading to the restroom first, followed by the target, at which point his partner makes the arrest. Lucas is clearly uncomfortable with this assignment, as shown in flashbacks to when he was first placed on the detail. His conversations with Andrew force him to confront the real lives he is destroying by participating in this homophobic policing practice.
There is a slight age difference between the two men, which plays into Lucas seeing Andrew as a vision of what he might become if he stays in the closet: married with children, living a lie, constantly suppressing a part of himself and existing in quiet pain. Andrew, meanwhile, looks at Lucas with the opposite emotion: regret, and thoughts of a missed opportunity to live openly earlier in life. Lucas’s future is not yet cemented. Tovey delivers a performance filled with tortured restraint, and there is a key moment near the film’s finale when Andrew’s life comes crashing down; the shock of it feels painfully authentic.
Lucas’s reasons for remaining in the closet are presented in a grounded and deeply human way. His father dies when Lucas is young, and his grandfather steps in as a positive male role model. None of these men are portrayed as homophobic, and his father in particular is shown as emotionally intelligent and compassionate. Lucas grows up in a society and time where being gay is not part of mainstream social discourse, so he doesn’t know anyone who is openly queer. I appreciated that this “origin story” avoids linking Lucas’s sexuality to abuse or trauma. Instead, it is Lucas’s maternal uncle, Paul, who serves as the film’s core toxic male presence. Paul represents another possible future for Lucas; or perhaps the very behaviors that help Lucas understand why he isn’t straight.
What I most appreciated about Plainclothes is the way it creates a stylistic texture that feels like a perfect recreation of mid-90s America, while giving us a genuinely complex character to follow. Because of the fragmented narrative, we come to know Lucas both as a plainclothes police officer and as a young man growing up. His observations of Paul are especially illuminating, though I can imagine many viewers misunderstanding them. Paul isn’t harmful because he is a heterosexual man; he is harmful because he consistently pressures his family to clean up after him and shoulder his responsibilities. Lucas begins to understand that staying in the closet would mean refusing to fully accept responsibility for his own life. The film hints that Lucas will make the right choices; but those choices lie beyond the scope of this story.
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