BBC
From the intimate scenes in Harry Styles’ new drama to Billy Eichner’s Bros, is mainstream cinema finally becoming less coy about gay sexuality on screen, asks Louis Staples.
It starts with a soft touch of the neck, when museum curator Patrick Hazlewood (David Dawson) and policeman Tom Burgess (Harry Styles) are sitting together on a sofa, in a Brighton apartment, after drinking three large whiskeys. The sex scenes in Michael Grandage’s My Policeman – a gay romance film about two men in the 1950s, when homosexual sex was still a criminal offence – actually made headlines months before the film’s release in select US and UK cinemas last Friday. An interview with Styles in Rolling Stone promoting the film, in which he bemoaned a lack of “tenderness” in gay sex scenes, sparked controversy. “So much of gay sex in film is two guys going at it,” Styles said, saying he and director Michael Grandage wanted to show instead that gay sex can be “loving and sensitive.” The comments were rebuffed and even mocked by some. Styles was accused of feeding into the homophobic idea that homosexuality is acceptable as long as it is not too your “in-your-face”. (After all, what is wrong with “two guys going at it”?). It was also suggested that Styles needed to brush up on his knowledge of cinema, because sex scenes of any kind between men in mainstream films – let alone sexually frank ones – are still pretty rare. While progress has been made when it comes to representation, showing “two guys going at it” is still somewhat of a cinematic taboo.
Styles’ remarks are slightly more understandable after watching My Policeman, however, which can also be streamed globally on Prime Video from 4 November. The film features several sex scenes that, as in the 2012 novel by Bethan Roberts it’s adapted from, are distinctly tender – but that doesn’t make them timid or censored, as it was suspected they would be following Styles’ comments. Rather, the numerous sex scenes are long and feel genuinely intimate. Without being overly explicit, Grandage doesn’t shy away from depicting the sexual acts performed by the characters, particularly during their first encounter. Indeed, sex is a key vehicle for the film’s character development, not only illustrating both the euphoric early stages and subsequent simmering tensions in Tom and Patrick’s relationship, but also reflecting the awkwardness in Tom’s lustless marriage to Marion (Emma Corrin)…
