Premiering earlier this year at Sundance Film Festival where it picked up the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for its ensemble, Carmen Emmi’s feature debut Plainclothes stars Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey in a story of an undercover officer in 1990s Syracuse who lures and arrests gay men, then ends up falling for a target. Picked up by Magnolia Pictures for a September 19 release, they’ve now debuted the first trailer.
Here’s the synopsis: “Set in 1990s Syracuse and featuring breakout performances from stars Tom Blyth (HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES) and Russell Tovey (LOOKING), director Carmen Emmi’s Sundance award-winning thriller follows a promising undercover officer (Blyth) assigned to lure and arrest gay men who defies orders when he falls in love with a target (Tovey). At his mother’s New Year’s Eve party Lucas, a young police officer, loses a letter no one was ever meant to read. Amid the backdrop of the suffocating family party, the search for the letter unlocks memories of a past he’s tried to forget: months earlier, while working undercover in a mall bathroom, Lucas arrested men by seducing them. But when he encounters Andrew, everything changes. What begins as another setup becomes something far more electric and intimate. As their secret connection deepens and police pressure to deliver arrests intensifies, Lucas finds himself torn between duty and desire. With time running out and his past closing in, PLAINCLOTHES builds toward a New Year’s Eve reckoning where everything he’s buried threatens to erupt.”
John Fink said in his Sundance review, “A darker take on coming out, Plainclothes has a few familiar twists but ultimately succeeds through its performances and take on the material. The last act effectively ratchets up the tension, bringing the two timelines to a head around some familiar family archetypes. Then again, 1997 was a different time, full of misconceptions and HIV/AIDs PSAs. The film reflects what kind of fears might have existed a few years after Tom Hanks won the Oscar in Jonathan Demme’s groundbreaking, flawed Philadelphia. As far as coming-out films go, Plainclothes, in the tradition of Cruising, treats the revelation with modern sympathy and period paranoia, a throwback to a time before cuddly rom-coms like Love, Simon.”
See the trailer below.
The post Plainclothes Trailer: Acclaimed Queer Thriller Arrives This September first appeared on The Film Stage.
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