This review originally ran on September 11, 2022, for the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
A love triangle plays out over decades in Michael Grandage’s “My Policeman,” based on the 2012 novel by Bethan Roberts, who was inspired by the 40-year relationship between English novelist E.M. Forster and policeman Bob Buckingham, as well Buckingham’s wife, May, who also became close with Forster. As described by Roberts in a 2012 essay in The Guardian, this quiet, proto-polyamorous situation was “a wonderful muddle,” which seemingly worked for all three participants in their own way.
The relationship at the center of “My Policeman,” isn’t so much wonderful as it is tragic.