To many that exist outside of the athletic bubble, competitive rugby can often seem superficial. A vicious dance that’s seemingly limited to tackles and tries, the humanistic nuance behind the player is hard to see. Melding the worlds of rugby machismo and communal queerness, In From the Side is a testament to the dramatic realities of life away from the pitch, yet leaves a somewhat sour taste in its aftermath.
Playing for the B team in a gay rugby club, Mark (Alexander Lincoln) catches the eye of A team player Warren (Alexander King) on a night out. Quick to pursue their passionate connection, the pair embark on an affair with the knowledge that each already has a significant other. As Mark and Warren throw more caution to the wind, their actions are soon to have irreversible consequences.
A continuation of the noticeable sporting theme of 2022’s BFI Flare Festival, In From the Side does manage to hold its own. For those that find the grasp that lad culture has over British masculinity overbearing, it’s probably best to look away. It’s particularly interesting to see the landscapes of ladhood and queerness as symbiotic — a giant leap from the social perceptions of gayness as flamboyance and Lady Gaga. The typical agenda is still present, peppered through scenes of clubhouse parties and the ‘dick of the day’ drinking a pint he’s already thrown up. It’s a type of masculinity that feels extremely familiar, each player blending into the same format of brown eyes and brown hair that accents any nightclub in the Western world.
It’s Mark and Warren themselves that are anchored to the narrative’s context and questionable subtext. Their dalliances examine classic elements of cheating, akin to a miniseries that usually puts the emotional strife of a woman at its fore. The pairing feels like one of convenience rather than passionate romance, each in the right place at the right time to give the other something they feel they’re missing. By doing so, In From the Side makes a blatant association between cheating and queerness. Functioning as a male-centric version of The L Word, each character exists in a dangerous limbo between traditional coupling and ethical non-monogamy.
What exactly perpetuates the cheating — the toxic masculinity or otherwise toxic behaviours that are ingrained in intra-community stereotypes — become difficult to unpick. It’s inadvertently seen as riskier to hold hands in public than have sex, while the lack of knowledge and context about a potential partner allows each protagonist to act fully on self-indulgence. When accountability does come, it is satisfying, though perhaps acts as too little too late. Moving between different sets of British domestic politics the adults acting within this conjoined framework never feel like more than entitled private schoolboys.
Thematic redemption exists in In From the Side’s visual language. There’s a strange balance of brashness and intimacy, its depictions of sex refreshingly sensual. The lines of the human body are praised, existing side by side in group showers like the most natural thing in the world. Dramatic pathetic fallacy takes the form of darkened torrential gameplay — a stark contrast to its jarring use of queer slang and appropriated ‘woke’ language.
Despite its fleeting moments of cinematic glory, In From the Side is a messy scrum atop seedlings of positive queer representation. With touch-and-go performances and questionable length, the film’s narrative framework makes it difficult to buy into its notions of sweet and sexy.
