plainclothes

The opening of this film, of a young man cruising in a mall, quickly establishes the setting and decade and set me on edge whether or not I thought this film was going to "do something." The movie is shot on film and in a 4:3 ratio, interspersed with footage recorded on other kinds of film and cameras—the effect is disorienting.

From the start, there is a sense of surveillance, communicated through both the main character's eyes—searching for marks, looking in mirrors, matching gazes—and that interspersed footage which feels like a recording in a way the "normal" footage of the film doesn't. This looking (between characters and the audience at other clips) quickly is shown to also be a fear of surveillance for the main character. The film is kind of a coming out film, so this surveilling and fear of surveillance has much to do with the main character both being found out and finding himself out.

The intimacy in the scenes between Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey is pretty remarkable. There is an education in cruising here and a clear-sighted understanding of masculine intimacy in the 90s—in no way particularly queer, but just other. The relationship between the characters is marked by age as well. I wonder how this film would be received by a younger audience, but then again, I think the claims of the prudishness of the young 20-somethings is overblown on the internet. That thought, too, reminds me of the interspersed footage, mixes of memory and desire; the valences of the internet revealing and masking, in turn, desires—desiring and detesting something with culture over and through time. (But what culture on the internet?)

Later in the film—which has been quiet throughout, very focused on silence and dialogue (and the dialogue is picked up wonderfully; there's a sense of distance as audience from the characters on the screen...perhaps it's a technical error, but it is nonetheless effective in the film)—there is a single song that creates a kind of music video moment, paired with the main character having a breakdown about potentially being outed. I don't think I have much to say about this, but it does push the film further into the the strange or estranged fantasy space created by the interspersed cuts of other footage. Certainly not a romanticization of life or memory.

I think there's more to say about the final scene, about performance, audience, coming out, resistance...maybe more, but, not that talking about it would be a particular spoiler, I'll leave it.