‘My Policeman’ Toronto Review: Harry Styles And Emma Corrin Caught Up In 50’s-Set Forbidden Love Triangle
My Policeman, which had its World Premiere today at the Toronto International Film Festival, has its roots in a novel by Bethan Roberts which was actually based on a complicated love relationship between famed novelist E.M. Forster (A Room With A View, Howard’s End, Maurice), his male lover of 40 years, a policeman named Bob Buckingham, and Buckingham’s wife May Hockey who slowly came to realize her husband had a long standing affair with Forster, but even after he had suffered a series of strokes took care of the author in his later life so deep was their friendship. Roberts changed the names and fictionalized it all for her book which is now the basis of Ron Nyswaner’s (Philadelphia) screenplay which explores the love triangle of three freewheeling friends in 1957 who each was hobbled by the mores of the time, repressing rather than expressing their own sexuality, even as the sexual desires and confusion hit a boiling point.