A Reckoning in Plain Sight: Carmen Emmi’s Thrilling Deante Explores Desire, Duty, and the Prisons We Build for Ourselves
- Stephen Wick
- 3 minutes ago
- 6 min read
In the closing moments of 1994, during a stifling family New Year’s Eve gathering in Syracuse, a young man named Lucas is on the hunt for a letter. This isn’t just any letter—it’s a secret, a confession, a fragment of his soul that he never meant for anyone to discover. As the countdown commences, this quest ignites a torrent of memories, drawing us into the essence of PLAINCLOTHES, one of the most eagerly awaited and emotionally intense films to debut at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Written and directed by Carmen Emmi, this thriller is more than a period piece; it’s a deeply personal excavation of a past that many would rather forget, and a powerful love story that defiantly blooms in the shadows of oppression.
At its core, Plainclothes is a high-stakes romantic thriller fueled by a devastating ethical conflict. Lucas (a breakout dramatic turn from Tom Blyth of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) is a promising police officer in 1990s Syracuse. His assignment is grim: go undercover in mall bathrooms and public spaces to seduce, entrap, and arrest gay men.
The operation is cold, clinical, and dehumanizing—until it isn’t.
When Lucas encounters Andrew (the effortlessly charismatic Russell Tovey of Looking and Feud), their connection is immediate and electric. What begins as another routine setup spirals into something authentic and dangerously intimate. As their secret relationship deepens, the police pressure on Lucas to deliver arrests intensifies, tearing him between the rigid duty he swore to uphold and the liberating desire he never knew he could feel.
“The idea that sting operations such as this still existed haunted me,” Emmi confesses in his filmmaker’s note, recalling the 2014 Long Beach sting operation that initially sparked the story. “It forced me to confront the reasons I had closeted myself for so long.”
A Personal Homage to a Hometown
Plainclothes is steeped in an authenticity that only a native son can provide. Emmi, who grew up in Syracuse, shot the film on location in the very places that defined his youth—his childhood mall, the Landmark Theatre, the greenhouses where his grandfather taught him to pot flowers. This isn’t just a backdrop; it’s a character in itself, reflecting the suffocating societal expectations of the 90s.
“I remembered deepening my voice, lying about my favorite music and movies to appear more ‘masculine’ — more ‘straight,’” Emmi writes. “I realized that, shaped by societal expectations of what a man should be, I ‘policed’ my feelings and became my own harshest enforcer.”
This internal struggle is mirrored in Lucas’s journey. To visually represent his protagonist’s inner turmoil, Emmi and editor Erik Vogt-Nilsen wove a unique layer into the film’s fabric: Hi8 footage shot on the same camera Emmi used as a child. These grainy, nostalgic glimpses act as Lucas’s inner monologue, “what he sees and what he believes he sees,” creating a haunting bridge between memory and reality.
A Stellar Cast Brings a Forbidden Romance to Life
The chemistry between Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey is the engine of this thriller. Blyth masterfully portrays Lucas’s tense, coiled-spring anxiety, while Tovey brings a grounded warmth and vulnerability to Andrew, making their impossible romance achingly real.
The cast includes Maria Dizzia (Orange Is the New Black) as Marie and Amy Forsyth (CODA, The Gilded Age) as Emily, who represent the different facets of Lucas’s fractured world.
A Film for the Self We Leave Behind
Plainclothes arrives as more than just a compelling story; it’s an act of reclamation. Emmi made this film for his seven-year-old self, “so that he could exhale.” He made it for anyone who has ever hidden a part of themselves to survive.
He recalls a potent memory that guided him: “a kid in the grocery line, watching their mom turn over a magazine to hide the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. That kid can’t watch this movie, but they can watch me turn the magazine back around.”
With its heart-pounding suspense, searing romance, and profound emotional depth, Plainclothes does exactly that. It turns the magazine back around, inviting us to witness a story of forbidden love and personal reckoning that promises to leave audiences breathless until its final, explosive moments.
PLAINCLOTHES, from writer/director Carmen Emmi, premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is a film not to be missed.
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