With help from a Kickstarter campaign, film-maker and rugby coach Matt Carter has made a poignant lo-fi drama about a gay London rugby team. It’s a film with some terrific real-feeling characters, the kind who speak in the way actual people do – they’d be binge-worthily watchable in a series on TV or a streaming platform, flawed and lovely. Here, a bit unfortunately, they’re relegated to the sidelines – B team to a romance between the film’s two least interesting characters.
One of those two is Mark, played by obscenely good-looking former Emmerdale actor Alexander Lincoln. Mark is in an open relationship with his rich, arty-looking boyfriend, sharing a penthouse overlooking the Thames. They’re living the dream, but seem stagnant emotionally as a couple. Mark has recently joined gay rugby club, the South London Stags where he claps eyes on Warren (Alexander King), who is in a monogamous relationship with another teammate. In five minutes flat, Mark and Warren are slammed up against the wall of a toilet cubicle.
It’s an annoyingly long film – well over two hours – and a goodish chunk of this time is spent watching Mark and Warren in hot, can’t-keep-their-hands-off-each-other clinches. The script gives us less about their emotional connection and to be honest, the will-they-won’t-they-stay-together drama is a bit of a snore. The best scenes are down the rugby club, portrayed with tremendous warmth as a happy-ish semi-dysfunctional family.
I wanted to know more about captain Jimmy, the team’s Jürgen Klopp, who gives pre-match pep talks with deep emotional intelligence. And club comedian Pinkie (Pearse Egan) who has a lovely speech about hating rugby at school as a gay kid. The absolute grimness – or glory, if you see it that way – of grassroots rugby looks horribly authentic too. The cold, the mud, the terror of being charged at by four men who order XXL when buying T-shirts and look like extras in a Viking epic.
• In from the Side is released on 16 September in cinemas.
