Harry Styles stars as the object of desire in My Policeman

My Policeman presents the kind of high-production-value period piece that’s the backbone of the British film and TV industry. Adapted from a novel by Bethan Roberts and directed by Michael Grandage (better known for his work in theatre), it’s a highly exportable product, especially to Stateside culture vultures who usually love this sort of semi-literary melodrama.

However, its box office prospects may be challenged by the scuttlebutt online that it features an even weaker performance from pop star Harry Styles than his much-derided turn in Don’t Worry Darling. Styles isn’t actively awful here, just rather inadequate when it comes to playing anything much more than the pretty pouting object of two rivals’ desires. Although, in both this and Darling, he does show a talent for screen sex acting, a skill less valued than it should be.

It is the late 1950s and Styles is Tom, a closeted policeman involved in a torrid secret relationship with museum curator Patrick (David Dawson). So successful is their subterfuge that naive schoolteacher Marion (Emma Corrin) doesn’t suspect a thing even when Tom, whom she’s been steadily romancing and expects to marry, keeps asking Patrick to come along on their dates. Eventually the penny will drop and, thanks to the priggish morality of the times, will have disastrous consequences, like a coin dropped from a skyscraper.

All this is relayed in flashback while in the film’s present, the 1990s, Marion, Tom and Patrick are drawn back together. They are played by Gina McKee, Linus Roache and Rupert Everett, respectively, all fine actors but none much resembling their younger counterparts, especially the men. Not only is the casting confusing, the distorted physical chemistry undercuts the heart of the story, which is precisely about the tension between physical desire, sexual preference and other kinds of love.

With homophobic hate crimes rising, now is an apt time to remind viewers of how awful life was before homosexual relations were decriminalised, yet somehow My Policeman misses its polemical mark.

★★★☆☆

In UK and US cinemas from October 21 and on Amazon Prime Video from November 4