In a shabby apartment in Moscow, an American journalist ask a retired spy why he betrayed his country and defected to the USSR fifty years ago. The answers take them back to 1932, where in the...

In a shabby apartment in Moscow, an American journalist ask a retired spy why he betrayed his country and defected to the USSR fifty years ago. The answers take them back to 1932, where in the closed atmosphere of a British boy's school, young Guy Bennett (Rupert Everett) realizes that his attraction to his classmates is more than a passing phase. There, in an environment permeated by desire and denial in the wake of a gay classmate's suicide, Bennett falls desperately in love with a younger student, James Harcourt (Cary Elwes), and is introduced to Marxism by Tommy Judd (Colin Firth), his most loyal friend.