Director: Carmen Emmi

Stars: Tom Blyth, Russell Tovey, Christian Cooke, Maria Dizzia

Set in the 90s but feeling like the distant past, this is an involving drama from writer-director Emmi. Opening music OMC’s ‘How Bizarre’ beams us right into the time period. Tom Blyth is Lucas, an undercover cop in Syracuse, New York. His job is to hang around the local shopping malls and arrest gay men, who he escorts to the toilet. If they proposition him, he arrests them. This must all take place in silence as to speak to them would be deemed entrapment. Lucas on the surface seems broadly happy. He is the son of an ex-police officer, doing a job he seems to enjoy and is in a stable relationship with girlfriend Emily (Amy Forsyth). Then while working the mall, he meets Andrew (Tovey) a soft spoken middle-aged man. Rather than arresting him Lucas follows Andrew into the toilet cubicle where the older man gives him his number. Weeks later they meet up in a park. As a clandestine relation begins, Lucas starts to feel guilt about his job, something he keeps from his mother (Dizzlia). He has however confessed his confused feeling about his sexuality to the supportive Emily. The world Emmi conjures feels light years removed from these days of internet, legal hookups. In a painfully familiar scene Lucas’s commanding officer explains to his squad that men who commit oral sex in the lavatories are likely to go on to abuse children. Emmi ramps up the tension and paranoia through period appropriate VHS style effects, although they are deployed a little too liberally, along with the use of mirrors, and become distracting. The plot also feels contrived at times, but the story is anchored by excellent performances from Blyth and Tovey.

David Willoughby

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