The Man I Love

There is something almost disarming about the way Ira Sachs approaches tragedy in The Man I Love. At first glance, the film seems to revisit familiar territory: New York in the late 1980s, the AIDS crisis looming over a queer artistic community, lovers trying to cling to fragments of joy while death waits silently in the background. Yet what makes this film remarkable is precisely its refusal to succumb to the conventions that defined so many AIDS dramas before it. Rather than building a manipulative crescendo of suffering, Ira Sachs creates something infinitely more fragile and moving: a portrait of people desperately trying to stay alive emotionally, artistically, and sexually as the world around them slowly crumbles. The result is one of the director’s most mature and deeply human works, a film that feels less like a historical reenactment and more like an intimate memory preserved in cigarette smoke, neon lights, and unfinished songs.

At the heart of this delicate emotional storm is Rami Malek as Jimmy George, a downtown performer whose charisma fills every room he enters, even as his body begins to betray him. Jimmy has just survived an AIDS-related hospitalization and throws himself wholeheartedly into rehearsals for what could be his final stage performance, a drag-infused adaptation of the little-known French-Canadian film Once Upon a Time in the East. The role is almost dangerously perfect for Rami Malek, an actor often criticized for that very theatricality that here becomes Jimmy’s defining trait. In the hands of another filmmaker, the performance could have veered into exhausting mannerism, but Ira Sachs skillfully transforms Rami Malek’s intensity into the character’s survival mechanism. Jimmy performs because performance is the only way he knows how to exist. Every exaggerated gesture, every flirtation, every musical number feels like an act of resistance against disappearance itself. There is a painful contradiction in Jimmy: he is narcissistic and vulnerable, magnetic and selfish, radiant and already fading away. Rami Malek captures this contradiction with striking commitment, particularly during the heart-wrenching sequence where Jimmy sings Melanie Safka’s “Look What They’ve Done to My Song” at his parents’ wedding anniversary party. The scene is staged in an almost casual manner, but the emotional weight of the moment hits with unbearable force, as if Jimmy himself realizes midway through the song that this might well be his farewell.

What elevates the film beyond a mere character study is the extraordinary tenderness with which Ira Sachs observes the people who gravitate around Jimmy. Tom Sturridge delivers perhaps the film’s most understated yet heart-wrenching performance as Dennis, Jimmy’s longtime partner and caregiver. Dennis is not written as a martyr, nor as the stereotypical suffering lover who waits helplessly on the sidelines. On the contrary, Tom Sturridge imbues him with an exhausted compassion that becomes the emotional backbone of the film. Watching Dennis organize Jimmy’s countless medications, silently monitor his health, or endure the humiliation of Jimmy’s escapades reveals a devastating portrait of love transformed into duty without ever losing its intimacy. A particularly beautiful touch throughout the film is the way physical gestures take the place of explanation: hands resting on shoulders, glances exchanged in crowded apartments, bodies leaning toward one another at the table. Sachs understands that queer intimacy, especially during the AIDS crisis, was often expressed in tiny gestures of care rather than grand declarations. Dennis may not dominate the scenes verbally, but his presence haunts every shot.

The arrival of Vincent, played by Luther Ford, introduces the film’s unsettling energy. Vincent is young, reckless, fascinated by Jimmy’s bohemian aura, and seemingly blind to the danger surrounding him. In lesser films, this love triangle might have devolved into melodrama, but here, it becomes something sadder and more existential. Vincent represents not only temptation; he embodies youth itself, the possibility of unblemished desire, untainted by fear. Jimmy is drawn to him not only by carnal desire, but also because Vincent allows him to momentarily forget his mortality. Their scenes together vibrate with nostalgia, confusion, and denial, while Dennis watches from the sidelines with growing anxiety. The brilliance of Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias’s screenplay lies in its refusal to pass definitive judgment on either of them. Jimmy’s infidelity is certainly selfish, but it also resembles the desperate attempt of a man refusing to let the world reduce him to a patient waiting to die. As for Vincent’s naivety, it becomes a symbol of an entire generation still trying to understand what AIDS truly means, emotionally and physically.

One of the film’s greatest achievements is the way it recreates downtown New York in the late 1980s without ever succumbing to nostalgic fetishism. The apartments, rehearsal spaces, drag bars, and underground clubs feel alive rather than staged. Director of photography Josée Deshaies bathes the film in warm reds, smoky blues, and a subdued golden light, creating images that seem suspended between dream and memory. There are moments when the camera simply lingers on faces listening to music or dancing together, and these sequences become as emotionally charged as any exchange of dialogue. The music itself functions almost as a second language throughout the film. Jimmy’s performance of George Gershwin’s “The Man I Love,” which gives the film its title, becomes a heart-wrenching meditation on desire and transience, while small musical interludes during dinners and gatherings reveal how art served as an emotional lifeline for these communities. Sachs never treats the performance as a spectacle; on the contrary, the music becomes an extension of intimacy, mourning, seduction, and resistance.

Another deeply moving aspect of The Man I Love is its portrayal of the chosen family alongside the biological family. Rebecca Hall is magnificent as Brenda, Jimmy’s sister, embodying both fierce love and foreboding grief in nearly every scene. There is an extraordinary sadness in watching Brenda try to convince herself that Jimmy is getting better while understanding that she is witnessing only a temporary respite. Ebon Moss-Bachrach, though underutilized, brings warmth and realism to the role of Gene, the brother-in-law who quietly tries to shield his son from the emotional devastation hanging over the family. Sachs avoids any easy sentimentality here as well. Jimmy’s family is united but imperfect, loving yet uncomfortable with certain aspects of his life they cannot fully understand. A scene where Jimmy records a chaotic and deeply inappropriate message for his parents using his young nephew’s camera becomes both hilarious and heartbreaking—exactly the kind of tonal balance this film masters time and again.

What ultimately makes The Man I Love so memorable is that it refuses to reduce its characters to symbols of suffering. This is not a film that deals solely with death; it speaks of people clinging desperately to pleasure, art, sex, music, and companionship, precisely because death is near. The AIDS epidemic remains ever-present, but Sachs has the wisdom to leave it largely unspoken, allowing the disease to exist as an invisible shadow over every interaction. Pills scattered across tables, nervous glances after coughing fits, exhausting hospital visits, and abrupt emotional silences speak volumes more than any speech ever could. The film understands that tragedy often lies in the mundane details. Even its most devastating sequence (Jimmy’s catastrophic breakdown during a concert) is staged with restraint rather than sensationalism, making it infinitely more painful to watch.

As the final moments arrive, accompanied by the haunting melody of Ronee Blakley’s “Lightning Over Water,” The Man I Love reveals itself as a profoundly generous work: not merely an elegy for the lives lost during the AIDS crisis, but a celebration of the communities, passions, and artistic spaces that allowed people to continue loving in the face of extinction. Ira Sachs has made a film steeped in sadness, yet also brimming with warmth, sensuality, humor, and compassion. It is a film about queer survival without false optimism, about memory without the idealization of pain, and about the terrifying beauty of continuing to dance even when the music is clearly beginning to fade. Few filmmakers today understand emotional intimacy with such a level of honesty, and few performances in recent years seem as rawly vulnerable as Rami Malek’s in the role of Jimmy George. Quietly moving and deeply human, The Man I Love continues to resonate long after the screen has gone dark.

The Man I Love
Directed by Ira Sachs
Written by Ira Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias
Produced by Scott McGehee, David Siegel, Saïd Ben Saïd, Mike Spreter, Myriam Schroeter
Starring Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge, Luther Ford, Rebecca Hall, Ebon Moss-Bachrach
Cinematography: Josée Deshaies
Editing: Affonso Gonçalves
Production companies: Big Creek Projects, Assemble Media, Merino Films, SBS Productions
Distributed by Memento (France)
Release date: May 20, 2026 (Cannes)
Runtime: 95 minutes

Viewed on May 24, 2025, at the Pathe Palace in Paris, Theater 01, Seat B15

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