Rami Malek’s – In Ira Sachs’ “The Man I Love,” Rami Malek plays a New York performance artist in the 1980s whose affair becomes entangled with the slow violence of AIDS—played without bedside theatrics, and staged through intimate choices, art-world immersion, and a triangle
Rami Malek is at the center of Ira Sachs’ AIDS drama “The Man I Love,” and the film refuses to behave like one.
In the 1980s New York setting, Malek plays Jimmy George, a performance artist. Jimmy has an affair with the cute ginger man who moves into the apartment downstairs. a last grab at joie de vivre before the disease takes him down. The movie doesn’t show Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions. doesn’t linger over tearful bedside vigils. and includes only one hospital scene—focused entirely on Jimmy’s partner Dennis (Tom Sturridge) and how he reacts to Jimmy’s worsening and critical condition.
Sachs. who directs and co-writes the film with Mauricio Zacharias. seems drawn to the Manhattan arts scene of the period in a way that makes the whole story feel lived-in rather than staged. Sachs has a reputation for period films you can feel “and touch. ” and “The Man I Love” builds its immersion through that approach. placing Jimmy’s artistic life—however incomplete it may be—at the heart of the drama.
Jimmy’s identity as a stage performer lands in fragments. He stages a drag theater piece. but the origins and specifics are “murkily assembled.” The film suggests this will likely be Jimmy’s curtain call as AIDS finally starts to kill him. Even with the ambiguity around the performance piece. the drama hits with a kind of scarring impression. because it keeps shirking the familiar AIDS-movie shortcuts.
The story also marks a quieter. more inward-facing turn for Malek. an Oscar-winning actor best known for playing the flamboyant Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Here. Dennis takes care of Jimmy—doling out the needed AZT along with other pills and vitamins—so Jimmy can throw himself into his art. But Dennis’s care doesn’t come clean. The film frames it as a way to keep Jimmy going while also avoiding Dennis’s own reckoning.
That avoidance runs headlong into a new presence downstairs. Jimmy becomes distracted when Vincent (Luther Ford) moves into the apartment below. Vincent asks Jimmy to help move furniture, and the attraction ignites quickly. Meanwhile. Dennis is cautious and defensive toward Vincent about the growing pull between them. a tension that Sturridge delivers with taciturn. all-quiet-pain restraint.
Dennis understands something the others around him don’t fully control: Jimmy has a magnetism that can suck up all the air in a room. That’s true even at Jimmy’s parents’ anniversary party, where Dennis wasn’t invited—Jimmy sings a song and plays guitar, drawing the eyes of everyone present.
Vincent pursues Jimmy like a “homing missile,” but Vincent’s arrival doesn’t simply bring desire—it brings disruption. When Dennis interferes and essentially attacks him, Vincent screams back: “He’s an artist, he wants to have inspiration. He wants to fall in love with me!”
Earlier, Dennis says, “I hope you’re being careful,” making clear it isn’t his first time on the ride that is Jimmy’s wanderlust. For Vincent, the film plays it as green inexperience: he doesn’t recognize he’s being used as a muse, even though the erotic spark between Vincent and Jimmy is real.
The film widens its emotional pressure with family members who understand the clock ticking for Jimmy. Rebecca Hall appears as Jimmy’s sister, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach plays Jimmy’s brother-in-law. They’re not overtly homophobic, but they’re estranged from Jimmy’s personal life. One scene lands with particular sting: Moss-Bachrach’s character walks in on Jimmy oversharing to his nephew very personal details about his sex and drug use. The moment reveals a discomfort tied to Jimmy’s “lifestyle. ” but it also leaves a heavier question hanging—whether the discomfort is also about what Jimmy’s terminal pull does to everyone orbiting him.
Malek’s performance, described as the most affecting of his career, leans toward something more lived-in than his previous reputation. Malek’s career has often been built on ostentatiousness and singing to the back of the room; here. “The Man I Love” sometimes finds him acting rather than fully dissolving into the role. Still, the film gives him an AIDS-related neurological fit onstage as he’s about to begin his long-awaited performance piece. The movie treats it not as a solemn flourish but as a release—especially because. by then. the audience in the story has become exhausted by the play itself and doesn’t feel like watching it acted out again after so many clunky. stop-and-start rehearsals.
If Malek’s Jimmy is the gravitational center. the performances that sharpen the triangle are Sturridge and Ford. framed as “dueling counterpoints” in a romantic structure that feels increasingly ruinous. One sequence. shot by cinematographer Josée Deshaies in a “Cruising”-esque midnight-blue glow. follows Vincent as he goes after Jimmy at a club and nearly accosts him on the dance floor. Vincent rips off Jimmy’s shirt as Jimmy writhes in a possibly drugged-out. mentally lost-in-space state. with
Jimmy’s symptoms taking hold. The sequence turns to sex beside the toilet. with the film implying that—while Vincent’s interest seems unbothered by Jimmy’s infection—Jimmy may be less likely to contract the disease “if he tops.” Vincent. as the story plays it. doesn’t seem to care whether Jimmy is infected or whether Vincent could become infected too. Back at home, Dennis is left “probably glowering,” aware of how the story ends.
Sachs’ approach to filmmaking is a quiet provocation inside all of this. From film to film, he appears disinterested in expanding his audience. He’s described as one of the only American filmmakers of a certain profile putting gay stories onscreen with frank emotional honesty and a richly literate curiosity about film history—curiosity that shows up in the way the cast watch Maurice Pialat films before they head into production. The film’s place in that larger pattern is part of why the viewing experience is framed as both rebellious and controlled.
The closing sense is blunt: “This movie will hurt you.” The film carries a grade of B+.
“The Man I Love” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival and is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
Rami Malek Ira Sachs The Man I Love AIDS drama Cannes 2026 Tom Sturridge Luther Ford Rebecca Hall Ebon Moss-Bachrach Josée Deshaies AZT indie film