Plainclothes

Russell Tovey and Tom Blyth star in this searing game of cat and mouse as Andrew and Lucas, two men who meet under strenuous circumstances: Andrew is illicitly cruising the bathrooms of a strip mall; Lucas is an undercover cop on an assignment to catch and arrest men just like him. Still, there is an immediate pull, their connection leading Lucas to confront a long-buried attraction to men, a wave of desire that will have the young cop put his entire life on the line. Superbly paced and acted, Plainclothes harnesses lo-fi VHS footage to play with voyeuristic, tense notions of surveillance, the film’s labyrinthine chronology amplifying this feeling of suspension as the two men become irrevocably, dangerously intertwined.

Rafa Sales Ross