That title is cheesy as f-ck and I’m sorry but I couldn’t help it because Harry Styles is playing a cop in a new movie called My Policeman and he was photographed kissing Emma Corrin on set this week. You can see those photos here. This is why Emma was trending on Twitter for a while yesterday after those shots were released. But here’s the thing: this is not the romantic kiss that we’ll be waiting for when we eventually see this film, this is not the couple of the story.
My Policeman is based on the Bethan Roberts novel of the same name and it’s about Tom played by Harry, a police officer, who is gay and in love with Patrick. Emma’s character is called Marion and she’s in love with Tom. This is in the 1950s when gay love was illegal – and Tom and Marion end up getting married. So my point is this kiss between Harry and Emma will not be the high passion point of the film. The high passion point will be the love scenes between Harry and David Dawson who has been cast as Patrick. (They will be the younger version of the characters; the story will toggle between the 50s and the 90s at which point Linus Roache and Rupert Everett will take over as Tom and Patrick.) In fact, I’m counting on the high passion point. And if we don’t get that high passion point between two men, that’s going to be a problem.
Because that’s inclusion. If your lead character is gay and if he’s in love with a man, show me. Don’t tell me. And it’s not just that I’m a horny perv who wants to see two beautiful dudes go for it (I am and I do), this is about normalising love, queer love, queer touch, queer physical intimacy. Not portraying it, especially in this story, would be a total cop-out.
