Finding the right match for you has been the source of great romance dramas in film since the medium was created. My Policeman, the new star-studded ensemble piece that premiered at TIFF to one of the year’s glitziest premieres, is sadly too shallow to be anything more than a melodramatic mess.
Despite featuring six well chosen actors to play a romantic trio in contrasting parts of their lives, the mismatch is how this hollow and grim setting of the English coast pairs with a soap-opera like script to make a movie. The actors are far superior than the direction and writing surrounding them.
Brighton schoolteacher Marion (Emma Corrin) falls in love with policeman Tom (Harry Styles) in the 1950s, but their relationship is complicated when Tom begins a passionate same-sex affair with museum curator Patrick (David Dawson).
Most of the plot alternates between two timelines: one is the fallout of Marion, Tom and Patrick’s relationship as young adults, and the second takes place 40 years later when an older Patrick (Rupert Everett) is placed under a still-married Tom (Linus Roache) and Marion’s (Gina McKee) care after Patrick suffers a near-fatal stroke.
The premise of a forbidden gay relationship and its cover reassessed decades later isn’t an original one, though it does provide a high-stakes framework for romantic conflict. Who does Tom love more? Is he capable of loving them both? How does the love triangle alter over 40 years?
What follows in My Policeman, however, is a lot of shallow ruminating on how the three young characters could stay friends (or more) without exposing the truth. Any real challenges in their lives are ignored beyond how everyone feels.
The six-person ensemble cast, portraying the three characters at both stages in life, were collectively awarded a TIFF Tribute prize on Sunday last week for their collective performances in the film. That award instantly made audiences ravenously curious to see the movie - and that’s in addition to Harry Styles, playing the deuteragonist, being better known as a global pop star before being an actor.
However faulted, slow-paced and cumbersome the screenplay is, all six principal actors are in fact great. They each offer thoughtful, detailed and balanced performances as three people in a romantic crisis. If there is a standout, David Dawson’s younger Patrick is the most interesting and textured in how he plays each step of the curator’s life.
My Policeman plays like a deep Oscar hopeful looking to work at heartstrings, only to wash up as an empty promise of sincere love that’s stretched into a solution the audience figures out an hour before the script does.
My Policeman
5 out of 10
14A, 1hr 53mins. Romance Drama.
Directed by Michael Grandage.
Starring Emma Corrin, Harry Styles, David Dawson, Gina McKee, Linus Roache and Rupert Everett.
Opens in select theatres on October 21, 2022 and begins streaming on Amazon Prime on November 4 for subscribers. Also plays TIFF again on Sept. 16 and 18 with tickets available here.
