The first look at the period romance drama shows Patrick, Marion, and Tom spending time together as a trio, with Tom torn between his two loves. The film later jumps between the 1950s and the 1990s, with Styles’ Tom later being played by Linus Roache and Marion now portrayed by Gina McKee, as the couple decide to take an ailing Patrick (Rupert Everett) in after he suffers a stroke.
Styles described the sex scenes — which Grandage likens to taking inspiration from “Hiroshima Mon Amour” — as “tender.” “So much of gay sex in film is two guys going at it, and it kind of removes the tenderness from it,” he said. “There will be, I would imagine, some people who watch it who were very much alive during this time when it was illegal to be gay, and [Michael] wanted to show that it’s tender and loving and sensitive.” Styles added, “It’s obviously pretty unfathomable now to think, ‘Oh, you couldn’t be gay. That was illegal.’ I think everyone, including myself, has your own journey with figuring out sexuality and getting more comfortable with it. It’s not like ‘This is a gay story about these guys being gay.’ It’s about love and about wasted time to me.” Director Grandage previously described the character of Tom as “confused,” telling Vanity Fair, “It’s made more problematic by the fact that he’s a policeman, and he’s in a career that is about upholding the law. And the law in the country at the time is about everything he feels — the complexity of it is something that whoever was going to play younger Tom and older Tom needed to somehow understand and absorb.” Check out the trailer “My Policeman” below.
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