‘My Policeman’ Review: Harry Styles Swings Both Ways as a Bisexual Bobby
Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic English novelist E.M. Forster never married, and why would he? The author of “Maurice” and “Howards End” was gay, reportedly maintaining relations with a much-younger police officer over the span of four decades.
That man did marry, and history has it that his wife knew their secret. In “My Policeman,” this unconventional arrangement lends itself quite nicely to one of those slightly stuffy yet respectable period pieces of the kind that Ismail Merchant and James Ivory have made of Forster’s novels, jumping back and forth in time between the sexy stuff (featuring Harry Styles, fully embracing the ambiguity of his queerbaiting brand) and the maudlin way it resolves itself so many years later.
It all starts with a special delivery to a dreary seaside cottage: An invalid arrives at the house of retired policeman Tom (Linus Roache) and his schoolteacher wife Marion (Gina McKee).
It was her idea to take in the unpleasant and largely uncooperative Patrick Hazelwood (Rupert Everett, all but unrecognizable), whose presence clearly annoys her husband.
