The strength of Plainclothes is the way it captures a memory. Fitting, for a film primarily set on New Year’s Eve. Memories of loved ones often replay during the holidays, and, when for some reason or another, the relationship got cut off, they replay like a supercut highlighting all of the possible reasons why it ended. So while it does take a while to settle into, writer-director Carmen Emmi’s mishmash of VHS footage, shots from a distance, and the nineties setting strengthens Lucas’ guilt over the police work he was assigned to as an undercover officer, the kind of cruelty widely accepted by most institutions of the time. Plainclothes remembers this pain, the tension, and the isolation that many have denied existed.