Plainclothes
Directed and Written by Carmen Emmi
Starring tom Blyth, Maria Dizzia, and Russell Tovey
Runtime 1 hour and 35 minutes
Premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival

by Fiona Underhill, Staff Writer

The Sundance Film Festival is all about discoveries, and making his feature debut as writer-director, Carmen Emmi is one of them. For a first film, Emmi has managed to assemble a strong cast of mostly British talent and brought them over to his hometown of Syracuse in upstate New York for a personal tale that will resonate with many. When I first heard that Plainclothes was about an undercover cop catching gay men in public bathrooms, I assumed it was set in the 1950s or 60s, like the recent TIFF film My Policeman starring Harry Styles. It’s surprising therefore, to discover that it’s actually set in the 1990s, and this is a timely reminder of how recently things could be difficult and dangerous for gay men (let alone the rest of the LGBTQ+ rainbow). Emmi films Plainclothes in the style of a 90s camcorder, which certainly enhances the surveillance-style voyeurism that he’s clearly going for. However, many choices that Emmi makes in terms of both cinematography, and especially editing, unfortunately hamper the work of the strong cast – who deservedly won the Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast at Sundance 2025.

Plainclothes stars young British actor Tom Blyth as a rookie cop called Lucas, who is tasked with baiting gay men into mall bathrooms and provoking them into unzipping their pants. His colleagues including Ron (played by another Brit, Christian Cooke) can then swoop in and arrest the men for public lewdness and exposure. Lucas meets Andrew (you guessed it, a Brit! Russell Tovey) in the bathroom and something about him prompts Lucas not to expose him. Andrew gives Lucas his number, and they begin an affair. 

Tom Blyth attended Julliard in New York, and has played Americans in the TV series Billy the Kid and the big-budget Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. He also played one of Siegfried Sassoon’s lovers in Terence Davies’ magnificent Benediction. Blyth is already proving to be an exciting young actor, especially in the difficult role of Cornelius Snow – as he had to be romantic, sympathetic and appealing, but also convincingly follow an arc that took him into full-blown villain territory. Much of the power of Plainclothes relies on close-ups of Blyth’s face, and he does well to portray the internal panic and conflict that Lucas experiences, being drawn to a gay man at a fraught time, and in conflict with the role he’s been tasked with.

Russell Tovey has over 100 acting credits, and found fame with 2006’s History Boys. His other notable roles include the TV series Being Human, Andrew Haigh’s Looking and Years and Years. He appeared alongside Andrew Garfield in the National Theatre production of Angels in America. Tovey is always good at portraying charismatic and confident men, and it’s no different here. Andrew takes charge of the situation with Lucas, telling him when and where they will meet up, and carefully withholding details about his personal life.

Unfortunately, Emmi makes the fateful (and fatal?) decision to tell Plainclothes non-chronologically, and he frequently flashes back to camcorder footage of Lucas as a little kid. We see Lucas’ home life with his ill father Gus, and after his death, with his mother Marie (Maria Dizzia) and his unreliable Uncle Paul (Gabe Fazio), and with his girlfriend Emily (Amy Forsyth). Emmi constantly chops back-and-forth through time, giving individual scenes little room to breathe. The film’s greatest strength is the chemistry between Blyth and Tovey, and their intimate scenes, but these don’t really get going until around 50 minutes into the 90 minute film. It takes far too long to get to what should really be the ‘meat’ of the piece, and the editing is just too frenetic for this kind of drama film. The reason for the lack of chronology is a mystery, other than seemingly every filmmaker who is trying to be edgy or stand-out with their low-budget independent feature choosing to do this.

The lack of chronology lessens the impact of the scenes with Lucas’ family and girlfriend. There’s a great scene with a large family gathering, centered around Maria Dizzia (who has appeared in similar scenes and roles recently with My Old Ass and Christmas Eve at Millers Point), as Lucas becomes paranoid that his family might be suspecting things about his true nature. But the lack of build-up and context to the scene, due to us being thrown around in time so much, doesn’t make it land as well as it could. It’s a shame, because it feels like the excellent work of the cast is constantly being undermined by frustrating and unnecessary film-making choices.

The shooting style is so low-res, and the editing is so choppy, that it’s genuinely distracting and dizzying for much of the run-time of Plainclothes. These choices would feel more purposeful if this were genre film-making, but it feels like Emmi didn’t have enough confidence to tell this story – which could have been subtle and nuanced – in a straightforward way. The reveal of Andrew’s job also unfortunately feels like a cliche, which is obviously designed to elicit a certain response, and is another decision which undermines the strength of the acting and dialogue.

The production design (particularly in the extremely 90s mall itself) and costumes are also both strengths of Plainclothes. The setting for Andrew and Lucas’ rendezvous – initially a gorgeous old movie theater, and a greenhouse where they’re surrounded by plants and flowers, and then dark, dingy basements and a ‘quicky’ in a car – are really well chosen. Again, we’d benefit from being able to actually fully take in these spaces outside of shaky low-fi camcorder-style footage – which if it had to be used, could have been confined to the mall bathroom scenes, where it makes most contextual sense.

Ultimately, Plainclothes is a well-intentioned and clearly personal first feature from Carmen Emmi, with a strong cast being its greatest selling point. In Emmi’s future work, he would benefit from calming the editing down, and letting the film breathe, so that individual moments have more impact. And many, many current film-makers need to start questioning whether their story really needs to be told non-chronologically for good reasons, which are motivated by the actual script, characters, and context and not just a stylistic choice imposed upon it. Tom Blyth has an exciting career ahead – with upcoming roles for Claire Denis and Michael Winterbottom. Christian Cooke, who has a small supporting role in Plainclothes, deserves bigger and better parts, and Russell Tovey will surely continue charming us on film and TV for a long time to come. Plainclothes is worth watching for the acting, and the scenes between Blyth and Tovey especially. It’s just a shame that Emmi makes so many baffling and frustrating film-making choices.

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