‘The Man I Love’ Review: Rami Malek in Ira Sachs’ Cannes Contender

Veteran filmmaker Ira Sachs returns to a place where his own creative spark was lit, the downtown New York City world where artists of all stripes (and sexualities) from experimental theater to painting to music to poetry and more could congregate and feed their need to create, even in the face of impending death and the spread of AIDS in the late 1980s. This was a place to be alive, no matter what the future might hold, a place to fulfill your own needs and do it on your own terms.

Sachs and his longtime writing partner Mauricio Zacharias have set their screenplay in this milieu for a movie set just as the AIDS crisis was taking so many young and vibrant lives of artists. But instead of focusing on the dark side as so many films and plays have done, this one celebrates the continuing desire to keep moving, to be unapologetically alive and energized to give all you have left to art.

At the center of The Man I Love, which has its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival tonight, is Jimmy George (Rami Malek), a well-known singer and performer in this corner of the world who, as we meet him, is rehearsing a play and role for his experimental theatre company The Mechanicals. In it he is playing Carmen, a blonde-wigged drag character in a stage version of a long-forgotten movie focusing on an artistic community like the one in NYC. Even as he struggles with lines, Jimmy is a gentle presence people are drawn to, want to celebrate, help and nurture.

This however could be his last hurrah; he has just survived a hospital stay for AIDS-related pneumonia, a dance with near-death he has won, at least temporarily. His need to do what he does best is now everything and his longtime boyfriend, Dennis (Tom Sturridge), is his protector, the steady force in his life trying to keep Jimmy on track and breathing. That isn’t easy because into Jimmy’s orbit comes Vincent (Luther Ford), a young rather carefree man new in town who is attracted to Jimmy — both personally and to what he sees as the excitement of the community around him. Jimmy falls into an affair with Vincent much to the consternation of Dennis and others, and not to mention the health crisis lingering in the background, a sad fact many in the era still tried to downplay.

Also in Jimmy’s world is his sister Brenda (Rebecca Hall), her husband Gene (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and their son Billy (Dennis Courtis). They have arrived to celebrate the anniversary of Jimmy and Brenda’s parents. Brenda is the realist, the person who says it like it is and isn’t afraid to spoil the fun and perhaps denial that Jimmy’s serious illness poses. Still, the music, the dinners, the partying and the artistry go on.

At one dinner everyone gets to sing, and this is one of the film’s opportunities where the musical aspects Sachs has added comes into focus with some expertly chosen tunes. Hall in fact does a lovely “How Are Things In Glocca Morra” from Finian’s Rainbow. A highlight for me was to hear Malek’s mesmerizing rendition of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love,” the song that also gives birth to the film’s title. Later at the anniversary party, he does a winning cover of Melanie’s “Look What You’ve Done to My Song, Ma.”

Some early press materials suggested this film was actually a musical. It isn’t, but the music so expertly chosen gives it flight including a heartbreaking use of Ronee Blakley’s lilting 2009 song “Lightning Over Water” near the movie’s end.

Malek’s brave and wonderfully lived-in performance is one that will be long remembered, a career high for this Oscar winning actor who simply inhabits this man with dignity and determination, his days limited but his spirit untouched. You will be hard-pressed to hold back tears at the sight of him submerged in a bathtub of ice fighting back the harsh reality of a disease that defeated so many of our best and brightest. Sturridge as Dennis is quietly understated, someone not part of the artistic community his relationship with Jimmy has brought him to, but a good man who shows us what he did for love. Ford as the interloper Vincent is not in this for the kind of compassionate caring we feel from Dennis, but is kind of a sad figure of a young guy looking more for the thrill of the moment rather than the price it may cost. I found Ford, in his feature debut after just starting acting as the young Prince Harry in The Crown, to be impressive here in a tricky role that could have been one dimensional but instead recognizably human, if not humane. His final scene at the end of the film says it all.

Hall is perfectly cast as Brenda, though The Bear’s Emmy winner Moss-Bachrach is given too little to do to make much of an impression. Maisy Stella as Vincent’s roommate is a bright presence, and it is great to see the fine casting of the rest of The Mechanicals including experimental theatre vet Blanka Zizka, Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Adly Gurgis, and the wonderful Sasha Lane.

In recreating this particular era special attention should be paid to Tommy Love’s authentic production design in helping Sachs realize his return to the roots of his own creative beginnings and a career that has included highlights like Love Is Strange, Passages, Frankie, Little Men, Married Life, and last year’s much praised Peter Hujar’s Day, among others in a near-four decades behind the camera. With The Man I Love he comes back for only his second time in the Cannes competition (the first was 2019’s Frankie) and it is with a humane and heartrending film about the love of art and the love of artists that urges, as a Rita Pavone song on the soundtrack says simply Remember Me.

Producers are Scott McGehee, David Siegel, Mike Sprater, Miriam Schrocter, Misook Doolittle, and Said Ben Said.

Title: The Man I Love
Festival: Cannes (Competition)
Director: Ira Sachs
Screenwriters: Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias
Cast: Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge, Luther Ford, Maisy Stella, Rebecca Hall, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Dennis Courtis, Blanke Zizka, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Sasha Lane
Sales agent: Mk2
Running time: 1 hr 35 mins