“Gay rugby drama is a scrum of sexual tension and toxic masculinity,” read the headline of Attitude’s review of last year’s In from the Side, the most talked-about movie at BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival. It explored, with acute fascination, the explosive and adulterous affair between two members of an inclusive rugby team, in the vein of The London Stags RFC. Like Firebird before it, the movie’s journey has been staggering: a cinema release followed last October, as did an audience across the pond after the film received warm reviews in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Now In from the Side is available to stream everywhere, from Amazon Prime UK and Netflix to Rakuten. Not bad for a modest queer indie made for less than £50k.
At , we had our issues with the film — the bravado of the selfish, hyper-privileged characters, for example. “Brilliantly basic, XXL-frequenting swaggerers with egos bigger than their shoulders,” we called them in our review. “The kind of preening people you’ll find on Scruff’s Most-Woof’d, who live in high-rise Vauxhall flats, holiday at their parents’ Swiss chalets and make you remove your shoes at house parties.” Nevertheless, we could not look away — not least turns rugby into a kind of gladiatorial ballet, where hulking, otherworldly frames move in slow motion with mysterious elemental force but also haunting elegance. At the film’s centre is the almost unbearably photogenic Alexander Lincoln, who adds heartstring-pulling vulnerability to main character Mark. Who could have just been a handsome, homewrecking cliché. The performance is poles apart from Lincoln’s best-known role as ’s James Tate.
