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My Policeman – BFI London Film Festival 2022

Reviewer: Maryam Philpott

Writer: Ron Nyswaner

Director: Michael Grandage

Pitched as a sweet love story across time, there are a few reasons to see My Policeman, but most audience members will be there to check how Harry Styles’ acting career is coming along and whether he yet has the credentials to take top billing in a film. The answer is he’s getting there, and while he has to work to do on nuance and character development over time, there is potential here and much could be said of Roy Nyswaner premise even if the end result is not yet fully developed.

In the 1990s stroke victim Patrick comes to Peacehaven to be cared for by long married couple Marion and Tom, although the latter avoids spending even a minute in Patrick’s company. Something significant happened between this trio back in the 1950s when Museum curator and artists Patrick met Tom and encouraged him to sit for a portrait. But when Tom marries Marion, their mutual friendship becomes a battleground.

My Policeman is a memory film, large sections of the activity unfolding in the past and affecting lives and relationships in the present where eventually some kind of resolution will be forced upon everyone. And these two sections of Nyswaner’s film are a little uneven, giving the modern crew little to do but look ponderous, stare out of windows and talk in riddles. None of this is the fault of the acting, just a lack of anything tangible to say or even feeling the weight of forty years of angst. Poor Linus Roach as the elder Tom spends the entire film going for bracing walks with the dog along a concrete promenade that looks cold and damp.

So, a lot depends on the satisfactory creation of context in the 1950s sections which are recreated in lovely detail, full of colour and attention to period effect. And there is some mileage in the men hiding their affair especially when one is the embodiment of the law, as well as the pressure men felt to marry and live a ‘normal’ life. Nyswaner even elicits drama from their multiple deceptions as first the audience is led to believe that Marion will betray Tom with Patrick before the truth is finally revealed, showing some of the scenes and events from different angles to emphasise the hidden love at the centre of the film.

But character development is a problem, so much so that Nyswaner is not sure who they want the audience to sympathise with and who we should be rooting for. The unfortunate result is that you don’t end up caring about any one of them, and while Patrick and Tom’s relationship should be both meaningful and tragic, a passionate connection unfulfilled, instead it is Marion who is made to see the victim of deception, even cruelty, especially when the leads swan off to Venice for no plot reason other than to hurt her. She gets her own back, but it also costs her audience empathy.

Styles is fine as Tom but doesn’t quite offer enough charisma to make him the object of so much affection, nor does his Tom give any sense of caring deeply for either of them, rather pulling the rug from Roach in the later scenes. 1950s Patrick (David Dawson) isn’t especially likeable but Rupert Everett gets to flex his acting muscles as the older version barely able to speak and ravaged by a lifetime of despair. Meanwhile Emma Corrin and Gina McKee’s Marion is fairly flat as a character but both excellent actors give her more life than exists on the page.

The story of men unable to be in the relationships they wanted and forced to present a different face to the world has huge psychological and dramatic potential. Nayswaner’s film, directed by Michael Grandage, doesn’t quite capitalise on it and in trying to present six perspectives doesn’t fully satisfy with any of them. But Styles is on his way and one day My Policeman will be remembered as a stepping stone to the rest of his acting career.

My Policeman is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2022.

The Reviews Hub Score:

Has potential

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The Reviews Hub Film Team is under the editorship of Maryam Philpott.

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