‘My Policeman’ Toronto Review: Harry Styles And Emma Corrin Caught Up In ’50s-Set Forbidden Love Triangle

My Policeman, which had its world premiere today at the Toronto Film Festival, has its roots in a novel by Bethan Roberts which was actually based on a complicated love relationship between famed novelist E.M. Forster (A Room With a View, Howard’s End, Maurice); his male lover of 40 years, a policeman named Bob Buckingham; and Buckingham’s wife May Hockey, who slowly came to realize her husband had a long-standing affair with Forster, but even after he had suffered a series of strokes took care of the author in his later life so deep was their friendship. Roberts changed the names and fictionalized it all for her book, which is now the basis of Ron Nyswaner’s (Philadelphia) screenplay that explores the love triangle of three freewheeling friends in 1957 who each was hobbled by the mores of the time, repressing rather than expressing their own sexuality, even as the sexual desires and confusion hit a boiling point.

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Bordering on a rather soapy premise, this is a high-class production that keeps it upscale, if somewhat sexually graphic, all the way thanks to its Tony- and Olivier Award-winning director Michael Grandage and a sterling cast that has been split in two with the decades-spanning story — employing three younger stars for the ’50s scenes, and three older veterans playing the same characters in the ’90s. It is a risky technique that doesn’t quite pay off as the older and younger trios of actors don’t quite believably match each other, at least initially for me, until I came to accept the casting ploy.

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Plotwise, Harry Styles in his second film of the festival season after last week’s Venice debut of Don’t Worry Darling, plays British policeman Tom, who is befriended by lively museum curator Patrick (David Dawson), as well as a shier school teacher Marion (Emma Corrin, also in a second fest movie this week after the debut of Lady Chatterley’s Lover) who because of the times must contain her own growing sexual attraction to Tom. Eventually though, in the most proper of ways, Tom and Marion get married, not a loveless union but not a passionate one and one where Marion can’t seem to hold back her jealousy of the “friendship” between Tom and Patrick. With homosexuality illegal at the time, Patrick also has to watch himself, but one day alone with Tom makes a move that leads to a very physical and steamy clandestine affair that both keep secret from Marion. It is a continuing game of deception even as Marion gets increasingly frustrated, perhaps suspecting something but trying to win the kind of lover in Tom that just isn’t there. It certainly is for Patrick, and Dawson and Styles go for it with no holding back in a bedroom scene that leaves little to the imagination.

Harry Styles Explored “The Sensuality Of Touch” With Co-Stars For Role In ‘My Policeman’, Says Film’s Director Michael Grandage – Toronto Q&A

Meanwhile, as indicated by the beginning of the film, things are different decades later and that is where we see the now much older and graying Marion (played by Gina McKee) arriving to serve as a caretaker to a wheelchair-bound stroke victim unable to speak. Eventually, we discover this is Patrick (now played by a pensive Rupert Everett). In one moment when she is alone in his room, she finds a journal that details his affair, the one she suspected, with her husband Tom, who now is played by Linus Roache as a seemingly satisfied husband, long ago breaking away from Patrick once they were found out. The complications of what came before, the mutual agreement to move on and ignore what happened, and the need for closure provide yet another chapter still to be written for these three lives.

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Between Don’t Worry Darling and My Policeman, Styles is quickly proving to be the real deal as an actor, and he is very convincing here as a man lost in deception with his wife. Corrin made up in passion in Lady Chatterley’s Lover what is lacking in this subdued character who finally takes a stand but unfortunately, so much time is lost between. Corrin certainly is showing lots of range these days. Dawson is excellent in the sad position of simply being who he is in a time where being gay is a crime. My how times have changed, but have they? With some openly wanting to ban gay marriage again, My Policeman seems oddly timely in taking us back to darker days we thought were long gone. Everett, McKee and Roache are all fine as far as the contemporary scenes go, but I actually wish they had aged up the younger trio of actors which might have made this all a tad bit more convincing.

It is a handsome-looking production, and always kept my interest, but for me, it doesn’t quite reach its full potential. The producers are Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schecter, Cora Palfrey, and Philip Herd. Ben Davis provides some lovely cinematography, and the score by Steven Price is excellent. It will begin streaming on Prime Video beginning November 4, with a theatrical run starting October 21.

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