The Man I Love review: Rami Malek delivers the most provocative work of his career
The latest film from director Ira Sachs mashes together a heartfelt New York musical with an LGBTQ+ love story set at the height of the AIDS crisis.
mk2 Films/YouTube
- James Mottram
Published: Thursday, 21 May 2026 at 12:36 pm
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A star rating of 4 out of 5.
"He’s an artist. He needs inspiration. He wants to fall in love. He wants to fall in love with me. What’s wrong with that?" So says Vincent (Luther Ford), the ginger-haired ex-pat Brit living in New York in the late 1980s in Ira Sachs's tender portrait of creativity, The Man I Love.
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The "man" in question is Jimmy George, an off-off-Broadway performer, played with full commitment by Rami Malek, who offers up a second music-themed character of his career, following his Oscar-winning portrayal of Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.
Premiering in competition at Cannes, this brings Sachs back to the film festival, following his lacklustre 2019 drama Frankie, with Isabelle Huppert. Since then, he’s delivered two of the best films of his career, the Parisian love triangle Passages (2023) and the intimate two-hander, Peter Hujar’s Day, with Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall. The latter reappears here, as Brenda, Jimmy’s sister, and it’s not the only tangential connection. While Peter Hujar’s Day alluded to the 1970s New York artistic community, via the work of real-life photographer Hujar, this moves the needle on ten years or so.
Living with AIDS, and recently out of hospital after a bout of pneumonia, Jimmy is mounting a performance piece inspired by the obscure 1974 French Canadian film Il Etait un Fois Dans L’Est with a tight-knit theatre group. With multiple rehearsal room scenes, Sachs’s portrait of passionate theatre heads elegantly captures the spark of creativity that ignites between them. “This is music that’s gotta swing,” says the charismatic Jimmy, jumping on stage. It’s little surprise that characters gravitate towards him.
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With Jimmy very much the film’s centrifugal force, others drift in and out of the film. Tom Sturridge appears as Dennis, Jimmy’s lover who also cares from him during bouts of ill health. The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach features in a blink-and-you’ll miss it role, as Gene, one of those in Jimmy’s orbit. Sachs and co-writer Mauricio Zacharias create an impressionistic tapestry of characters, who don’t speak as much as they emote. With Sachs abandoning narrative convention, some will find this frustrating, but the director’s bold, uncompromising vision should be commended.
The music is organically integrated into the story; there’s no bursting into song here, like a traditional Hollywood Golden age musical. At one point, Hall’s character sweetly swings How Are Things in Glocca Morra?, the nostalgic tune from the 1947 Broadway musical Finian’s Rainbow, as others listen in raptures. Later, Jimmy serenades a gathering with the 1970 song What Have They Done to My Song Ma with touching sincerity. Just as he did in Bohemian Rhapsody, Malek nails his man’s musicality with real panache.
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Sachs also convincingly depicts the New York gay scene of the time, with sequences set in bars and clubs, as the Queer community gather in numbers. As Jimmy begins an on-off affair with his neighbour Vincent, who soon becomes obsessed with diva, Sachs doesn’t flinch in depicting explicit sex scenes. But there are also some beautiful, captivating sequences, notably a scene on the dance floor, bathed in blue lights, as characters writhe around Jimmy, in what feels like a performance piece all of its own.
Mashing together a heartfelt New York musical with an LGBTQ+ love story, Sachs cradles his cast warmly throughout, crafting a film that feels like a real throwback to his 1996 debut The Delta, in its honesty and integrity of characters on the margins. For sure, it represents the most provocative work of Malek’s career.
After a post-Oscar lull, where even his turn as a Bond villain in No Time to Die underwhelmed, this feels like a comeback to be celebrated.
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Authors
James Mottram
James Mottram is a London-based film critic, journalist, and author.
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