The Rectangular View

The Story:

My Policeman is about a retired couple, Tom and Marion, played by Linus Roache and Gina McKee, and Tom’s estranged ex-lover, Patrick, played by Rupert Everett. It begins in the present day, after Patrick has had a stroke, with Marion bringing Patrick home to take care of him. As Marion collects Patrick’s belongings, she reminisces about their past and how she and Tom met and started dating, and how she met Patrick through Tom. It isn’t until she begins to read Patrick’s journals that we find out about Tom and Patrick’s romantic relationship. Flash back to present day and we see that Tom wants nothing to do with Patrick, so the question is, why did Marion bring him there?

The backstory is told through memory and journal entries, and takes us back to 1957, when Tom was a policeman and dating Marion, who was a schoolteacher. Young Tom and Marion are played by Harry Styles and Emma Corrin respectively. While at work, Tom meets Patrick, a museum curator, who asks if he can draw Tom. Tom agrees, and the two become lovers, which is illegal at the time, so Tom introduces Patrick to Marion and the three go out on dates together, with Marion in the dark as to why Patrick is always around.

Marion has one friend who seems a bit perplexed by Tom and Patrick’s friendship, and she seems to be the only person raising an eyebrow to the situation. Not even Marion seems too troubled over it, and we have no idea what her family thinks since neither her family nor Tom’s are part of the story. And it isn’t until Tom and Marion marry that she starts to wonder about Tom and Patrick’s friendship.

You would think that the upcoming events would be filled with drama and tension, but that’s not what happens. We see Marion perplexed a few times, but never making much of it. Marion mentions wanting children, but nothing comes of that either. When the two have sex, Marion appears bored and Tom seems to be getting the job done as quick as possible, unlike the passion seen when he and Tom are sexually active. And when Patrick hires Tom to join him on a business trip to Venice without Marion, it’s done without too much arguing or tension. Marion simply takes the falsehoods Tom pushes at her and lets him go. I understand that times were different for women in the 1950s, but I still feel as if Marion would have put up more of a fuss than she did.

Even if Marion had come to accept her situation, we never see her grappling with it. We never get a feel for exactly what she’s going through, which is disappointing. Of the three, I feel that she has the more compelling story.

From here we see Tom and Patrick having a great time in Venice, and Marion getting a postcard from Tom and lighting it on fire. That’s about the extent of the drama. It isn’t until Tom and Patrick return that Patrick gets arrested for being homosexual and tossed into prison. So now you think it’s going to get good, that we’re going to find out that Marion was the one who tipped off the police, but it doesn’t. Tom admits to Marion that he and Patrick are homosexual lovers, and she doesn’t even raise her voice. There is no discussion, anguish, or argument. In fact, Marion even decides to speak on Patrick’s behalf in court.

As it turns out, Marion is humiliated in court when Patrick’s journals are read aloud, and the truth is made public. Both Tom and Marion are forced to leave their jobs and Tom goes to prison for two years. We still get no indication that Marion or Tom has a family or what they think of the situation, nor do we hear from any of Marion’s friends or coworkers. We don’t see them being forced out of their jobs; we simply find out after the fact.

By the time the movie wraps up and Marion admits to Tom that she was the one who tipped off the police, and that she stood up for Patrick in court out of guilt, we’re supposed to be shocked, but we’re not. The film would have had a more impactful ending if we had seen Marion’s humiliation at discovering the truth about her husband instead of being generally upset, especially if they had also shown how the people around her react to Tom’s close friendship with Patrick and how that affects her. Marion does have one friend who looks askance at it, but nothing really comes of it. Also, we don’t know anything about Marion’s family nor Tom’s, so the drama that could have come from that was thrown out the door. It’s as if they live in a bubble.

Final Thoughts:

I wish My Policeman had centered more on Marion than Tom and Patrick, especially since she had the more interesting storyline. We would have seen a more intriguing character acting out of shame, anger, and revenge instead of someone just going through the motions. The story is so poorly constructed that it’s difficult to recommend My Policeman to anybody.