Parky At the Pictures (10/10/2025)

(Reviews of Plainclothes; Urchin; and The Partisan)

PLAINCLOTHES.

Carmen Emmi started making films around the age of 14 and recalls producing a horror

entitled Alone for a class project. He has since produced four more shorts - Para Olivia (2011), Tina For President (2012), The Abandoned (2013), and The Forrest Boys (2014) - and reaches UK cinemas with his debut feature, Plainclothes, which won a prize at Sundance.

In Syracuse, New York in the late 1990s, Lucas Brennan (Tom Blyth) is an undercover cop whose main job is luring gay men into the bathroom at a shopping mall and having them booked for lewd behaviour. As a montage of Hi8 surveillance images demonstrates, he doesn't feel good about it, as he is conflicted over his own sexual identity and keeps hoping that no one spots his wandering eyes in the station gym's locker room. But he is under pressure from above to increase busts at a time when his father is dying and his relationship with his girlfriend has hit a sticky patch.

When he notices Andrew Waters (Russell Tovey) checking him out from an upper balcony, Lucas sees something kindly in the older man's eyes and he enters a stall with him with a finger to his lips to ensure he says nothing incriminating. When the zipper of his sweatshirt gets stuck, Lucas bails and signals to his colleague to let Andrew pass, as he's done nothing wrong. As they walk away, however, Andrew slips Lucas his phone number and he thinks about calling without going through with it.

Childhood flashbacks show how close Lucas had been to his father and we see him as Emily (Amy Forsyth) to stand beside him in the greeting line at the funeral. However, when they come to make the traditional New Year lentil soup without his father for the first time, he confesses to mother Marie (Maria Dizzia) that they have broken up and he feels he has let her down, as his Uncle Paul (Gabe Fazio) consistently does with his womanising and tantrums.

Lucas and Emily had split because he had admitted to liking men and she is hurt when he pushes her away after she had offered to stay the night after the funeral. He dreads Maria discovering his secret, yet uses father Gus's name when he finally calls Andrew and they agree to meet at an old movie palace. They slip away as `When the Red, Red Robin (Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along' plays on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and they chat in a storeroom before arranging a meet at a nature spot the following week.

At the station, Lieutenant Sollars (John Bedford Lloyd) insists that Lucas, superior Ron (Christian Cooke), and Black rookie Jeff Goldrick (Darius Fraser) start filming sink encounters through one-way glass in the mall washroom. This makes Lucas nervous during a trial run, as he feels there is nowhere safe from the prying eyes of the authorities and he has already mentioned to Andrew that he needs to remain closeted because jobs could be on the line if they are caught and prosecuted.

Nevertheless, he still meets up with Andrew and they start kissing inside a large tented greenhouse filled with flowers. They are interrupted when Andrew's pager goes off and he admits he is married. Mentioning his break-up, Lucas asks about the difficulty of keeping part of him hidden and they agree to dream of running away together to San Francisco. Andrew warns Lucas about AIDS and reminds him to be safe, as they lie on the ground and wish things were different.

In the present, Lucas has arrived at a family gathering and is aware that he has dropped a letter from Andrew and is desperate to recover it before it gets read. He gets nervous when he discovers that Uncle Paul's new girlfriend, Jessie (Alessandra Ford Balazs), is best friends with Emily's sister and he hides in the cellar - reliving a passionate encounter in Andrew's van before he stopped returning his calls - while he tries to stop himself from panicking.

While on duty, Lucas had spotted Andrew in the mall and had rushed into Ron's hiding space to report a problem with his earpiece to try to prevent him from filming a hook-up with Goldrick. In fact, his eyes had been playing tricks on him and the man he arrests isn't Andrew. But he decides to quit the force because he can't live with the strain of arresting gay men while being one himself.

Having logged Andrew's number plates, he tracks him down to the church where he is a minister and tries to plead with him to continue being lovers. Andrew explains that he can't simply walk away from his life because he has urges and feels deeply ashamed when he opens the office door to leave and sees his wife and young son standing outside. Despite Andrew's reassurances that the pain will pass, Lucas feels crushed and he keeps seeing the disappointment in Emily's eyes and dreads his mother giving him the same look.

After Emily leaves for New York to join a new flight crew, Lucas struggles to get himself on an even keel. However, he had received a letter from Andrew urging him not to give up on his true self and we hear the words being read as Lucas launches into a fight with Uncle Paul, who has seen the name `Gus' on the page and started badmouthing his brother-in-law. Having thrown him through a downstairs window, Lucas turns to his astonished relatives and owns up to the letter and is rewarded with a concerned half-smile from his mother.

Melodramatic ending aside, this is an assured first feature that owes much to the ambition of Carmen Emmi's writing and direction and the tautness of Erik Vogt-Nilsen's editing. This would still have played out effectively in a linear pattern, but the shifts of timeframe and the switches between footage formats reinforce the different senses of anxiety and angst that Lucas feels, as he loses his father, regrets wounding Emily, and comes to question the validity of the sting operation at the mall. The scenes with Andrew are deftly done, with both Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey (who keeps getting better and better) excelling in conveying the both passion and the paranoia that their furtive meetings generate - and the impenitent hypocrisy of the moral code that drives them into the shadows. .

More might have been made of Lucas's relationship with his mother, as their closeness needs to be emphasised to make the rising apprehension during the New Year party feel more cloying. Uncle Paul is needs toning down, as he's too much of a caricature for such a finely balanced drama and Emmi deserves credit for making the equally homophobic Lt Sollars more nuanced. Emily is also well drawn, with Amy Forsyth radiating regretful acceptance in her goodbye scene.

Combining with cinematographer Ethan Palmer, production designer Roxy Martinez makes telling contrasts between the bland uniformity of the mall concourse and the shabby grandeur of the movie palace and the colour-flecked earthiness of the greenhouse. The latter is seen after a brilliant match shot from the striations of the washroom mirror glass through a grainy camera lens to the wintry twigs dangling down from the trees at the beauty spot. Some of the close-ups of Blyth's face in moments of trepidation and temptation are also evocatively composed to help the audience feel the conflicted sensuality and shame that Lucas feels in the two worlds in which he has been entrapped by the prejudice of a threatened society that has since regressed back into intolerant bigotry. The connection between this backlash and the rise of the religious right is rather clumsily underlined by the revelation of Andrew's calling. But this is creditably mature for a debut feature and it will be intriguing to see how Emmi follows it up.

URCHIN.

Having grown up around addicts and volunteered for homeless charities like Under One Sky and Project Parker, Harris Dickinson decided to stick with what he knew for his directorial debut, Urchin. Also drawing on the experiences of the film's consultant, Jack Gregory, the 29 year-old known for his roles in Beach Rats (2017), Triangle of Sadness (2022), and Babygirl (2024), has sought to break with the conventions of standard social realist by flecking the action with surrealist reveries that leave an impression, even when they don't always come off. Such ambitious touches suggest that this will be the first of many assignments behind the camera.

Waking on a London pavement to the sound of a street preacher, Michael Wilshire (Frank Dillane) staggers off to retrieve his haversack from behind a dumpster. He's been sleeping rough for five years and, after a day spent asking for change from passers-by who barely acknowledge him, he finds a spot in an abandoned building to lay out his cardboard and sleeping bag. Discovering that his wallet has been stolen, Mike goes in search of Nathan (Harris Dickinson) and they are brawling on the floor when they are separated by Simon (Okezie Morro).

A City worker, he takes pity on Mike and offers to get him a soft drink. As he waits, Mike notices a woman playing a violin across the street. When Simon offers to buy him some lunch, Mike knocks him unconscious and steals his wallet and watch, only for him to be arrested after being caught on CCTV at the pawn shop.

Sentenced to 14 months, he calls his sobbing adoptive mother and complains about the guard giving him a strip search of having cold hands. As shower water curls down the plug, the camera follows and passes through what appears to be water filled with exotic creatures before coming out in a cave network, with Mike standing alone in the distance.

Released early, he is taken through the terms of his probation by parole officer Nadia (Buckso Dhillon-Woolley). She is briskly empathetic and aware that this isn't Mike's first experience of rehabilitation. But, while microwaving soup for her lunch, she brutally reminds him that he is hardly a priority for social services as a healthy white male in his twenties. Nevertheless, he gets a commis job under a hotel chef, Franco (Amr Waked), who is prepared to give him a chance, in spite of his prison record. Buying some new clothes from a secondhand shop and listening to self-improvement tapes, Mike tries to make a success of his new post. But he's soon out of his depth and is frustrated when a customer brings him to the table to complain about a steak.

Workmates Ramona (Karyna Khymchuk) and Chanelle (Shonagh Marie) take him out for karaoke and he has a good time belting out Atomic Kitten's `Whole Again'. He also meets with Simon and is surprised to hear how much the assault affected the man and his family. Yet he keeps messing up in the kitchen and Franco has to let him go after a flare-up and Mike rejects the accusation that he acts like a child and is unable to accept accountability. Having flung his life-coaching tapes against the wall of his hostel room, Mike gets a job on his own initiative with Lynne (Diane Axford) picking litter and emptying bins. He is paired with Andrea (Megan Northam) and they become an item, spending time at her caravan on the estuary. While partying with a couple of her friends, however, Mike snorts ketamine and he goes into a downward spiral after a modern dance performance reminds him that he had beaten Simon repeatedly after knocking him out. While washing his face in the venue bathroom, he thinks he sees the violin woman in one of the stalls (is she, perhaps, his birth mother?).

Facing eviction from the hostel, Mike asks if he can stay with Andrea and they argue over his immaturity and the fact he has blown his wages on drugs. She throws him out when he mocks her ambition to run a drinks kiosk (which feels more feasible than his proposed limo service) and he seeks out Nathan. He has moved in with an older woman and feeds mice to her pet snake. Frustrated by the fact he is clean, Mike seeks out his old homeless group in the park and gets obnoxiously wasted. Having been roughed up, he collapses in a 7/11 after trying to buy booze with loose change.

Returning to his rooftop spot, Mike is settling down when he hears noises. Opening a door, he sees the violin woman and finds himself sliding down a polished corridor floor when he tries to follow her. He passes into a room with an altar and finds Nathan in a long, white robe. They embrace, only for Nathan to hurl Mike out of a window and he falls downwards into enveloping darkness.

This would be an accomplished first feature from a director of any age, but it's particularly impressive given Dickinson's youth. He clearly paid attention while co-starring in Charlotte Regan's Scrapper (2023) and it would be fascinating to see how his style evolved through the shorts Who Cares (2013), Surface (2014), Drop (2014), and 2003 (2021) - but only the latter is available online.

Some of the reviews have been overly effusive, as Dickinson has hardly recalibrated social realism. But he has achieved a laudable sense of naturalism from a solid ensemble and from the excellent Frank Dillane, who makes Mike as self-destructively resistible as he is charismatically vulnerable (even though he always feels a bit too old to be an urchin in the Dickensian sense). Dickinson also contributes a deft uncredited cameo that avoids stealing focus from Dillane, whose physical depiction of gangly angst and anger is often show in long shots that emphasise how isolated he is in a teeming city. Editor Rafael Torres Calderón ensures that Josée Deshaies's camera creeps in for the odd close-up that reveals how hard Mike has to work to summon any enthusiasm and control his emotions. However, the cutaway interludes exploring his inner conflicts are less successful. They are capably designed by Anna Rhodes, but Dickinson struggles to incorporate them in his scenario and they wind up feeling a bit arch, as occasionally does the electro-grind of Alan Myson's score.

Nonetheless, this is mercifully free of the platitudinous politicking that calcified late-era Ken Loach and eschews the workshoppiness that sometimes undercuts the authenticity in Mike Leigh. Mike's milieu is well observed, while his undulating struggle rings as true as the speech patterns, which have a spontaneity that makes the dialogue seem eavesdropped. There are contrivances, notably involving Andrea's caravan, where an old boy who feeds Mike ketamine and vanishes immediately afterwards. The probation situation also seems to slide into the background (although this could be seen as an indictment of the system rather than merely negligent scripting). But Dickinson tells his story with compassion and conviction and it's reassuring to read that he intends making films along similar lines rather than being lured into the Marvel Cinematic Universe - although who hasn't found themselves longing to see Ken Loach's Captain America: Social Worker?

THE PARTISAN.

The remarkable courage of SOE agents, Odette Sansom and Violette Szabo, was celebrated in two classic British war films, Herbert Wilcox's Odette (1950) and Lewis Gilbert's Carve Her Name With Pride (1958). Yet it's taken until now for the focus to fall on their Polish colleague, Krystyna Skarbek, who was known as Winston Churchill's favourite spy. Frustratingly, she's been sold rather short in James Marquand's The Partisan, despite the best efforts of the daughter of Roman Polanski and Emmanuelle Seigner.

In a tight corner while posing as a prostitute in Budapest in 1941, Krystyna Skarbek (Morgane Polanski) bites her tongue to feign a TB attack in order to disgust a Nazi officer attempting to interrogate her about a corpse on a gurney. The quick thinking is commended by her handler from the Special Operations Executive (Malcolm McDowell), who sends her over the Tatra Mountains on skis into Poland in order to collect a microfilm containing details of German troop movements prior to a potential invasion of the Soviet Union.

Skarbek has another motive for the mission, however, as she hopes to persuade her Jewish mother, Stefania (Agata Kulesza), to leave Poland. Having spent the night in the family home reading her girlhood diary (which she burns), Skarbek sleeps with a neighbour, Feliks (Piotr Trojan). On leaving, she runs into a German patrol and claims to be a cleaner contracted to sanitise the apartments. However, she is forced to shoot an officer and seeks sanctuary in a nearby church, where she finds her mother. She slaps her for trying to convince her to flee and Skarbek is mortified when a search party enters and she witnesses Stefania's execution.

In fact, the countess was last heard of in Pawiak Prison in 1942, but hard fact isn't necessarily Marquand's priority, as he airbrushes Skarbek's resistance comrade, Andrzej Kowerski, out of her story (along with first husband, Jerzy Gi¿ycki) before leaping forward three years and omitting Skarbek's exploits in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Egypt to show her being put through a fake interrogation as part of her SOE training. She taunts the officer (Steven Waddington) by referring to her 13 field missions while he has been chained to a desk and her handler gives her the alias, Pauline Granville (when she was actually known as Christine), before dispatching her to southern France in 1944.

Parachuted into Vercours, Skarbek/Granville has a precious pendant stolen by La Fouine (Andrew Schofield), a local member of La Milice. However, kindly lorry driver Dupont (Grégoire Colin) helps her find British agent, Roger (Frederick Schmidt), and Maquisard Armand (Ingvar Sigurdsson). She informs them of the plan to make the biggest ever arms drop behind enemy lines to spark an uprising against the occupying Nazis. However, La Fouine gets suspicious on seeing Skarbek hurriedly leaving a church after assassinating a quisling and a gun battle ensues. She recovers her pendant and earns Armand's respect.

The plotting becomes muddy amidst more departures from the record, as the rebellion proves premature because the Allies don't send enough weapons and Roger (a conscientious objector who joined SOE after the death of his soldier brother) is dismayed that they have been used as a diversion. The Germans bomb the town and Skarbek discovers that Dupont has been an informant after being turned into a junkie by the Nazis. He claims to love her and has not betrayed her because he knows she is driven by a love of the thrill rather than by any hard-held principles. Feeling guilty for having let such brave people down, Skarbek puts a wounded Armand out of his misery after they survive an air attack and uses his corpse to avoid detection by a patrol.

Wearing posh clothes and brandishing forged documents, Skarbek waltzes into the German bastion where Roger is being held. She confronts Captain Hamann (Piotr Adamczyk) and recognises him as the man who had killed her mother in cold blood. He spurns the chance to shoot her and pays when she calmly releases his prisoner and watches with Roger as they nail a bawling Hamann into a coffin. Peering through a knothole, she feels vindicated (although one can sympathise with Marquand because the truth about this heroic episode had already been nabbed by the BBC series, Wish Me Luck back in 1988).

Instead of covering Skarbek's role in the last months of the war, Marquand wraps things up with a 1952 scene showing her turning down a desk job offered by her devoted handler while mopping a hospital floor. A closing caption reveals that Skarbek was cast adrift to fend for herself after the war. She did take a series of menial jobs after being decorated by the British and French governments and did find it hard to find anything to match the adrenaline rush of combat. But this half-hearted summation, like the preceding film, does scant justice to Skarbek as either a partisan or as a person. It even glosses over her murder in 1952 by Dennis Muldowney, who had become obsessed with Skarbek when they were stewarding together on the passenger ship, MS Ruahine.

Compounding these misjudgements, Marquand concludes by having Skarbek look into the lens and smile as she admits having enjoyed every second of being an agent because it allowed her to be herself. It's a tacky way to end a biopic that provides scant context for a highly selective account of Skarbek's heroics. Moreover, the cod psychological insight provided by the odd demon-filled flashback and bout of self-doubt, does her a grave disservice, despite Morgane Polanski conveying something of the courage and composure that have become associated with Christine Granville.

Clearly operating on a budget that compels him to limit the focus, Marquand might have devoted more time to developing the characters of Armand, Dupont, and Roger, as they come across as stock figures. Similarly, the cameos of Malcolm McDowell and Steven Waddington have a comic-book feel, while the battle sequences are staged and edited in a way to make it almost impossible to fathom what's going on. No doubt, for all its contractions and confusions, this tribute has been made for the best of reasons and Krystyna Skarbek certainly deserves to be better known. But she's entitled to a more considered and accurate memorial than this.