Story
EDDIE the ‘bride’ and KITTY and LOLA, his ‘bridesmaids’, excitedly fix themselves up. SYDNEY, an older gay man and refined snob, boasts about how he was once shot nude by Cecil Beaton. Bettie herself, who, having witnessed Ronnie at work, softens to him and says he’s always welcome in this space. With each portrait, Ronnie shows care and attention to detail - he is an artist at work.
GEORGE, an impressionable and naive gay man, clutches a powder puff, something he is nervous to have on his person, but desperate to use. Ronnie encourages him and takes a series of photographs of him posing with the puff. George seems to recognise Ronnie from ‘Baker Street’ and a moment of tension (sexual or otherwise, it’s unclear) passes between the two of them.
Ronnie eventually can’t resist entering the club and leaves us in his photography studio. A couple enters, seeking a snatched moment of intimacy.
In a shocking twist finale, Ronnie tips off the police who proceed to raid Bettie’s Bar. Ronnie proceeds to dismantle his studio and listens, in devastating detail to the chaos on the other side of the door. Following the raid, a brief conversation between two policemen reveals Ronnie to be an undercover officer himself, his real name Fowler. He shows his boss JENNINGS the photographic evidence he has collected and is left with a pat on the back and a slice of wedding cake. We end on a solitary image of Ronnie (or Fowler) alone about to tuck into the cake. With his fork raised, he pauses, for some reason unable to bring himself to eat.
1936: A Photographic Darkroom. A pair of hands develop a print in a chemical bath. The print reveals a man in drag wearing a handmade wedding dress, surrounded by beaming male friends, also wearing women’s clothing and makeup. There is a knock on the door and the hands, belonging to RONNIE, hurriedly lift the print from the tray.
Throughout the film, we return to this darkroom space where Ronnie develops portraits of the partygoers, and in between, the subjects of these pictures are brought to life.
1936: Soho, London. Ronnie, a young photographer clutching his portable Kodak Camera, bangs on the door of an underground club. BETTIE, the forbiddable owner of the bar with peroxide blond hair in rollers, refuses him entry, saying it is for ‘members only’. After he reveals he knows EDDIE, she begrudgingly relents and lets him in, but only on the understanding that he sets up his camera in a cramped side room, away from the main space of the club, where in a few hours an illegal wedding between two men will take place. Ronnie does his best transforming his small room into a makeshift photography studio and (nervously at first and then with growing confidence) begins to take portraits of the party goers.
