OVERVIEW
The Man I Love follows Jimmy George (Rami Malek), a performer in New York’s downtown theater world of the late 1980s, recovering from the AIDS complications that nearly killed him. He may be near the end of his life, so he decides to keep making art for as long as he can, taking on a new stage role. Around the same time, a new neighbor moves in, and Jimmy finds himself having to choose between his longtime boyfriend and caretaker, Dennis (Tom Sturridge), and the younger, eager newcomer next door.
BACKGROUND
For roughly thirty years, since his 1996 debut The Delta, Sachs has been one of American independent film’s defining chroniclers of gay life in New York, in dramas like Keep the Lights On, Love Is Strange, and, most recently, Peter Hujar’s Day. He arrived in the city in 1984 and lived through the height of the AIDS epidemic inside the downtown theater world. Both he and Mauricio Zacharias, his writing partner of two decades, had wanted to turn their experiences from that time into film for many years, yet only after living through the fears of the pandemic together did they decide to do it. It is Sachs’s second time in the Cannes competition after Frankie in 2019.
THE REVIEW
As in his best films, Sachs transports you to that moment in time, and for the entire duration of The Man I Love, you feel as he must have felt, hanging around these people. There is a lingering fear hidden in the characters’ expressions, yet for a long time, the director keeps the epidemic itself at a distance, lurking in the shadows. The fear is always there, and Sachs grows it from the sidelines, in a pause inside a sentence, in a flash of frustration during a performance as Jimmy’s mind drifts into his condition. But the joy is just as present, the joy art brings, and the joy of people who built a family of their own after years of being told they did not belong.
Rami Malek creates a man who effortlessly becomes the center of the room, and it is easy to see why everyone is drawn to him. He builds on both the strengths and the weaknesses of his Bohemian Rhapsody performance (he actually gets to sing this time), shining most in the moments that show Jimmy at his most fragile. His musical sequences, above all “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma,” are heartbreaking, helped by Sachs’s observant camera that never lets him out of our sight. There are stretches where Malek tips into the performative, the actor visibly working, and yet, as with his Freddie Mercury, that touch of artifice suits a man who has spent his life performing for others while hiding his real self from the world.
Although Jimmy goes through the standard “man gets sick” storyline, the film never feels tired, or its emotions manufactured. Two particular storylines shine through. First, Jimmy’s sister, played by Rebecca Hall, commands the screen in her brief appearance and once again disappears into Sachs’s world. She is the bridge between Jimmy and the world outside, the last member of his family still standing on his side. And second, his boyfriend Dennis, played fantastically by Tom Sturridge (the MVP of the film), becomes a tragic figure: understanding the nature of his partner, he still allows him to live out his last days that way, selfless about what it costs him. His look when Jimmy fails to recognize him is extremely haunting. Ebon Moss-Bachrach unfortunately has little to do, aside from one funny sequence in which he walks in on Jimmy describing his experiences in vivid detail to his young nephew. The younger neighbor, played by newcomer Luther Ford, is the weaker thread, and the film leans on him too much, and the script makes him way too whiny.
Filled with fantastic song performance scenes, whether at a table where everyone gets to sing their line or in Malek’s own numbers, the film feels like a portrait of that time, forever captured for us to experience. A truly delightful and beautiful film.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Man I Love is a remarkable achievement by Sachs, the best I’ve seen from him yet. The film strikes a great balance between big “Oscar-y” moments that gut-punch you and a more documentary-like approach, and, as a result, characters feel like real people; as much as their pain and fear ring true, so do their joy and connection.