The Man I Love: Ira Sachs’ Soulful and Transcendent Musical Drama

Just premiered at Cannes, Rami Malek gives a pitch-perfect turn in an intimate account of the AIDS epidemic’s devastating impact on the New York theatre scene

Performance seeps into nearly every scene of The Man I Love, Ira Sachs’ frank romantic drama about the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS on New York’s gay community and downtown theatre scene. Our subject is Jimmy (Rami Malek), a minor, localised theatre celebrity on the mend from a debilitating bout of AIDS-related illness, cared for by his non-performer partner, Dennis (Tom Sturridge). He’s excited about his new starring role to focus on. But outside of rehearsals, performance is the principle method of processing – or delaying – the loss that threatens to consume Jimmy’s world.

The Man I Love was announced last year as a musical; in actuality, there are no original songs, and they are all performed diegetically to in-scene audiences, never sounding more dramatic or operatic than the dining rooms and function-room stages they take place on. In the mouths of Jimmy or his sister, Brenda (Rebecca Hall), lyrics become malleable, a roundabout way of expressing a feeling that would sound too small or simple in words – Jimmy’s cover of “Look What They Did to My Song, Ma” by Canadian singer Melanie is somehow plainer than the honest truth. On screen, Malek has always had a contradictory blend of intensity and slipperiness, which he ably scales down for the film’s soft timbre; likewise, Sturridge’s broody, cheekbone-heavy handsomeness lends to Dennis’ constant tightness around Jimmy and his friends.

The film’s soulful musical renditions are juxtaposed with the mundane, day-to-day efforts to maintain normality that mark Jimmy’s decline – coping mechanisms that amplify a shared fear of impending tragedy. Dennis has adopted the role of caregiver, with rituals of preparing food and medication holding back his anger and despair at Jimmy’s illness. Their young English neighbour, Vincent (Luther Ford), is infatuated with Jimmy’s elegant charisma; he invents multiple fake reasons to spend time with Jimmy, a performance Dennis sees through every time.

But Sachs has not made a film about deception or even explicitly about grief – in The Man I Love, the anticipation of loss commingles with Jimmy’s clumsy (final) pursuit of experiences that elevate reality, transforming into a feisty lounge singer evocatively named “Carmen” and indulging in an affair with the eager English boy from one floor down. Vincent’s youthful vitality – not to mention his awkward, repeated come-ons – has for Jimmy a similar appeal as playing Carmen, the giddy rush of having admiring eyes on him making him feel alive. Their affair triggers stern warnings from their respective flatmates: Vincent’s straight friend is a mouthpiece for the homophobic hysteria of the AIDS epidemic; Dennis gives a far more frightening rebuke by showing Vincent every pill and drug Jimmy needs to take after his last bout of illness.

Traces of Ira Sachs’ recent films echo in The Man I Love: like Passages, there is a queer love triangle with a reserved man who grows accustomed to his impulsive lover’s sexual exploration. Like Peter Hujar’s Day, it is a period film in New York’s art scene, far more interested in the look and feel of apartment interiors than recreating the city’s trademark cultural sights from the period. This is a Sachs film: 90 minutes of vignettes where stillness is ruptured and pain is softly confessed in rooms with an almost hermetic-seal quality to them. 

Instead of relying on the fixed structure of putting on a show to give his story tension and catharsis, Sachs is again interested in select, mundane glimpses of how love and loss linger in our minds: the fleeting thought that causes Brenda to suddenly shake with sobs while talking with her husband (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), or whatever makes Jimmy hurriedly, guiltily confess his sordid past to his nephew’s camcorder. Even when these episodes play together, there’s still a sense of missing some type of grand insight, definitely by design. 

Scenes often have a languished, subdued mood, but still a sense of anxiety pervades, a fear that Jimmy is starting to lag behind the rest of his world. It’s what makes The Man I Love’s heart-rending music so affecting – if there is something we won’t say or can’t recall, singing to the ones we love feels like the purest, most transcendent thing we can make our bodies do.