“Emmi brilliantly flips the narrative typically associated with George Michael’s story and the countless others who endured similar experiences.”

In 1998, George Michael was arrested by an undercover officer for engaging in a ‘lewd act’ at a public restroom in Beverly Hills. The fallout from the incident led to a fine of $810, 80 hours of community service, and ultimately, after the media turmoil, Michael’s public coming out. While not a biography of the pop icon in any form or way, Carmen Emmi’s impressive debut Plainclothes is set against the same historical backdrop – the late ’90s, a post-AIDS crisis era where the homophobia and panic of the previous decades had already permeated the cultural consciousness. The first politicians were tentatively beginning to voice support for same-sex unions (still a distant hope at the time), while casual homophobia and entrenched heteronormativity dominated mainstream media, from TV shows to movies and music.

In Plainclothes, we follow Lucas (a superb Tom Blyth), a young undercover officer tasked with luring and arresting gay men, all the while grappling with his own repressed sexuality and unspoken desires. Emmi brilliantly flips the narrative typically associated with George Michael’s story and the countless others who endured similar experiences. This time, the camera shifts its focus from the men seeking connection in public restrooms to the ones whose gaze followed them – those tasked with the arrests. It’s a film about men trapped in bathrooms, but more than that, it’s about men trapped within their own minds, living lives they never wanted.

The recurring use of CCTV footage, sudden jarring noises, and strobe-like flashing lights serves as a visceral visual cue, expertly illustrating the perilous reality of being a closeted man cruising in the ’90s. Though not a thriller, Plainclothes strikingly creates a creeping sense of being watched, a constant, suffocating presence that keeps the film from devolving into a superficial romance or a mere fetishization of a complex and turbulent period. Here, true perversion lies not in the sexual acts themselves but in the voyeuristic eyes of those observing. Embodied by every cop endlessly watching training tapes on how to arrest gay men, and recording their encounters, turning the act of surveillance itself into a sexual thing.

A thin, precarious line is drawn: the officers are trained not to speak, only to flirt with their eyes, allowing the men to initiate the conversation. When the time comes, the goal is clear – to arrest the men when they expose themselves in a stall. Lucas knows the routine. But the body speaks in ways words cannot, and after meeting Andrew (Russell Tovey) – whom he chooses not to arrest – Lucas keeps him close, drawn into repeated sexual encounters. He knows that the deeper he goes with Andrew, the closer he gets to his own destruction. As Georges Bataille writes, “I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction. The need to go astray, to be destroyed, is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth.” Lucas sacrifices other gay men, stepping over their bodies to keep himself afloat, yet with every glance at Andrew, he thinks “consume me.” And that is his ultimate contradiction. Maybe, it is by destroying himself that Lucas might find freedom.