‘The Man I Love’ Review: Rami Malek Gives a Career Best Performance in Ira Sachs’s Ode to Art and Life in 1980s New York [A-] Cannes
André Brassard’s 1974 French Canadian film Il était une fois dans l’Est (Once Upon a Time in the East), a story of cabaret drag queens in Montreal, sets the stage for the 1980s set The Man I Love, the gorgeous new film from Ira Sachs.
Famed and fictional queer entertainer Jimmy George (Academy Award winner Rami Malek) and his small New York theater troupe are in rehearsals to recreate part of the film (or at least one scene) as a new play. The group is reminiscent of experimental theater collectives like The Wooster Group, Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater and Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company, with Jimmy modeled after experimental artists like Ron Vawter and Frank Maya, a pioneering gay comedian, and men who died young but fought to create until their last breath as so many did from this decade, ravished by AIDS.
In the “putting on a show” of it all, Malek is a drag version of Carmen from the Brassard film, a rough around the edges, curly blond singer sporting a cropped, studded pink leather jacket. Script in hand, Jimmy is the only one in the group who’s not off book, constantly needing to check back to it, ask for a line or blocking. his mind is beginning to deteriorate, but determined to keep working. It’s a testament to Sachs to choose not to mention AIDS or HIV, we just know.
Jimmy is supported by boyfriend Dennis (British actor Tom Sturridge, sporting a sharp American accent), who at times feels like he’s not much more than a pill organizer for Jimmy. Dennis is the interior to Jimmy’s exterior (anyone who is or has been in a yin-yang relationship will recognize this dynamic), remaining on the sidelines but without whose support Jimmy couldn’t thrive. Their dynamic is challenged when a new neighbor moves in, Vincent, a lanky and horny redhead played by Luther Ford in his feature film debut (he was Prince Harry in the last season of The Crown). His youthful exuberance and risky spontaneity appeal to Jimmy immediately, much to Dennis’s chagrin yet lack of surprise. In small roles, Rebecca Hall (Peter Hujar’s Day) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear) play Jimmy’s supportive sister and brother-in-law, Brenda and Gene, respectively, and Jimmy’s creative community is populated with dozens of real-life artists that Sachs has known over the years, and thanks to casting director Avy Kaufman, provide impeccable authenticity.
Outside his drag persona, Jimmy’s personal style is exquisite; high-waisted slacks, a stunning yellow leather jacket and a very fitted pink turtleneck thanks to costumer Megan Gray, while production designer Tommy Love provides the minimalist but lived in set pieces for film. Both collaborate with Sachs for the first time but they’re a natural fit for the director’s aesthetic. It’s the second collaboration with director of photography Josée Deshaies, who shot Sach’s Passages (2023), and she works with a small palette of color that evokes the texture and energy of everyday life in downtown’s queer artistic circles of the 1980s.
Malek is something of a wonder here, in a career best performance and the most adventurous thing he’s done since Mr. Robot. With his small stature and wide, bulging eyes that make him look like a sexy Peter Lorre, he’s kind of an alt- universe Frankz Rogowski (from Sachs’ Passages). Knowing that Sachs regular Ben Whishaw (Passages, last year’s Peter Hujar’s Day) was originally set to play Jimmy but had to back out due to scheduling conflicts might seem like an uphill battle for Malek, but he’s quite perfect. In one fantastic scene, he’s teaching his troupe how to walk like a man vs like a woman, recalling the famous scene in The Birdcage with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. Even John Wayne is invoked. But Jimmy’s description of a woman as a figure eight, in how she moves her head, her shoulders, her hips, finds Malek in a place of fluid comfort like I’ve never seen from him before.
He gets a few live singing showstoppers here, including a version of the song which gives the film its title, and one heartbreaking scene where Jimmy performs Melanie’s “What Have They Done to My Song Ma” at his parents’ anniversary. It’s enough to erase the awfulness that was Bohemian Rhapsody, if ever so briefly. While The Man I Love isn’t a musical, it’s Sachs’s most musically driven film, drawing from classics in the way that live singing not only defines the movie’s sense of mood, but diegetically propels the narrative. At a dinner party, where everyone is called on to sing a verse or two, Hall and Malek sing “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” from the musical, Finian’s Rainbow, with a rich sadness. Antonio Vivaldi’s “Stabat Mater, RV 621” provides a haunting backdrop throughout the film.
Among the diverse group of producers includes singer Halsey and writer/director/producer partners Scott McGehee and David Siegel with Sachs’s longtime collaborator Mauricio Zacharias once again co-writing (who’s been on every Sachs film since Keep the Lights On). Together they’ve created one of the director’s most indelible films, a specific snapshot of a turning point for queer life in New York who lived unapologetically.
Grade: A-
This review is from the 2026 Cannes Film Festival where The Man I Love had its world premiere In Competition.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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