Critic Reviews

Sachs has not made an AIDS movie we’ve seen a million times, largely because it’s not so much a movie about death as one about wringing every last drop out of life, whether it’s fuel for creativity, love or one last surge of passion and pleasure.

In Sachs’ spectacular, shattering vision, which he co-wrote with his longtime collaborator Mauricio Zacharias, we witness the stories and the memories that we can only hope our own loved ones will tell of us when we’re gone.

Malek is something of a wonder here, in a career best performance and the most adventurous thing he’s done since Mr. Robot.

Sachs, co-writing the film per usual with Mauricio Zacharias, has a deep investment in the Manhattan arts scene of the period that pays off in terms of the drama’s immersiveness.

While Sachs’ vision is at the center of it all, this moment is also a stark reminder of Rami Malek’s considerable and we mean considerable talents. A gutsy and vulnerable version of the actor that has not graced anyone’s screens in at least a decade.

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.

Despite displaying a reverence for queer personas and artifacts, this is the first time Sachs has directly recuperated elements of the AIDS crisis, and it serves like an homage for the countless gay men who lost their lives during their prime.

It’s an honest, melancholy tale that pushes against the typical idea of the saintlike sufferer, instead portraying the central character as a credibly flawed individual. And just as he always does, Ira Sachs rejects stereotypes and expectations to deliver something that feels candidly close to life.

The Man I Love doesn’t feel so much like a portrait of a time and place rather than something more essential and human: a portrait of a passionate and loving character caught in a final performance he didn’t ask for, and which he wishes would never end.

Ira Sachs’s The Man I Love is a stirringly offbeat drama, small and delicate and disarmingly precise, with a performance by Rami Malek that, if there’s any justice, should finally quiet down all the reviewers who’ve always been so snarky about him.