David Dawson, Emma Corrin and Harry Styles in "My Policeman."

David Dawson, Emma Corrin and Harry Styles in "My Policeman." Credit: Prime Video/Parisa Taghizadeh

MOVIE “My Policeman” 

WHEN|WHERE Streaming Nov. 4 on Prime Video; also in theaters.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT In the English suburbs during the 1950s, a love triangle forms between a young policeman, Tom (Harry Styles); his schoolteacher wife, Marion (Emma Corrin); and a well-heeled museum curator, Patrick (David Dawson). The affair is between the two men — a risky gambit at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offense. “My Policeman” is fiction, but not entirely: It’s adapted from Bethan Roberts’ novel, which was inspired by the novelist E.M. Forster (“A Room with a View,” “Howards End”) and his secret romance with Bob Buckingham, a married policeman.

MY SAY If anyone is still wondering whether the pop star Harry Styles can act, “My Policeman” should put all doubts to rest. Styles’ film debut, as a young soldier in Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” wasn’t much to speak of — in fact, he barely spoke — and his commendable performance in this year’s “Don’t Worry Darling” got lost in a flurry of negative publicity that muddied the film’s release. In “My Policeman,” however, Styles is thoroughly convincing as Tom, a man unable to reconcile his forbidden sexuality with his conservative, working-class roots.

Though Styles is the marquee name here, he’s really part of a six-person ensemble. As “My Policeman” toggles back and forth between past and present, each role is played by a younger or older actor. Corrin, best known as Princess Diana in Netflix’s “The Crown,” plays the young Marion as a sheltered girl who is understandably smitten by Tom; after all, he’s boyishly handsome, and they share the same modest dreams. Equally smitten is Patrick, an older and more worldly man who moves between upper-crust circles and furtive back alleys. (Dawson, a veteran theater actor who plays Patrick with a touching vulnerability, is this movie’s secret star.) The three form an odd but freewheeling friendship — or so the ever-trusting Marion believes.

The older trio is far less happy. Tom (Linus Roche) and Marion (an excellent Gina McKee) are still married, and living in an uneventful seaside town, but something terrible has happened to Patrick. In a wheelchair following a stroke, he has neither money nor friends to help him. His arrival at Tom and Marion’s — she has volunteered to care for him — sets off a rush of memories, resentments and at least one shocking revelation. (This older, haunted Patrick is played movingly by Rupert Everett, the trailblazing gay star of 1984’s “Another Country.”)

Graceful direction from Michael Grandage (an English theater director; this is only his second feature film) and an eloquent screenplay by Ron Nyswaner (“Philadelphia”) keep “My Policeman” from feeling like a simplified message movie. It's driven by living, breathing characters whose relationships are both carnal and complicated. Tom has a purity of heart that attracts both Patrick and Marion, yet neither really knows what to do with their tormented policeman. It’s Tom’s inability to face himself — or is it the world’s refusal to let him? — that leads this movie to its heartbreaking end.

BOTTOM LINE A sophisticated and sensitive drama about the tragically high cost of love.

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