The Man I Love

If I had a cent every time Rami Malek played an eccentric queer musician dying of AIDS, I'd have two cents.

The Man I Love follows Jimmy George, a New Yorker living in the late '80s. Knowing he's dying of AIDS, he decides to make the most of the time he has left. To give himself a purpose, he sets out to stage a production of Once Upon a Time in the East. As his health continues to deteriorate, the process becomes increasingly difficult, but that doesn't stop him from becoming fascinated by his downstairs neighbor, Vincent, despite being in a long-term, deeply loving relationship with a partner who's doing everything he can to care for him until the very end. There's no real love triangle here. Instead, the film becomes a story about the recklessness of that new love interest, who ignores every warning and throws himself into Jimmy's orbit without thinking about the consequences.

The Man I Love is actually a fairly unconventional AIDS drama. If you're not paying close attention, you might not even fully realize what's happening until halfway through the film. Rather than focusing on the illness itself, it's a story about life — about someone who's already accepted his fate trying to hold on to creativity, the people around him, and whatever beauty he can still create.

Ira Sachs made a film that feels incredibly alive, colorful, and theatrical. While it's not exactly a musical, music and stage performances play a huge role throughout and become one of the main ways Jimmy's character is explored. In many ways, they're also the film's biggest driving force.

The screenplay, however, is where my issues begin. The Man I Love often feels slightly lost within itself. Even after it ends, it's surprisingly difficult to pinpoint a clear central story or a specific idea it wanted to tell. It takes a long time before the characters begin opening up or the film starts arriving at any meaningful conclusions. Very often, the film drifts away from its central point in an attempt to mirror Jimmy distracting himself from his own reality, but while the character's motivation is logical, the movie's detours might seem excessive.

Considering its fairly generous runtime, The Man I Love has more than enough time to properly develop its characters and tell a richer story, yet it never quite does. You're left wanting more from almost everyone. Out of the three central characters — Jimmy, Dennis, and Vince — only Jimmy feels fully realized, even though the other two are equally important parts of the equation. As a result, many of the events simply happen, and you're not always sure why. Only in the final stretch does the film finally settle into something more concrete, introducing the deeper ideas and emotional undercurrents that leave you thinking long after it ends.

I was lucky enough to attend the film's gala premiere and watch it together with the cast, and they absolutely deserve praise. Rami Malek is excellent here. This isn't exactly his first rodeo, but he convincingly captures someone suspended somewhere between life and death, between emotional collapse and desperately pretending everything is okay. Tom Sturridge is fantastic as Dennis, and honestly, he's the one I wish we'd gotten much more of. Luther Ford does a solid job as Vince as well, although the character itself never receives enough depth. The rest of the cast, including Rebecca Hall, Sasha Lane, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Maisy Stella, all fit naturally into the film, while the theatrical community surrounding Jimmy is beautifully brought to life.

In the end, The Man I Love is an unconventional film that simply never becomes as emotionally or dramatically rich as it could have been. It makes you reflect, it presents plenty of beauty alongside undeniable tragedy, but it never fully embraces its own potential. Still, there's something undeniably raw, beautiful, and deeply heartfelt about it that absolutely deserves to be experienced on the big screen.

6.5/10