The Man I Love

Nach BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY spielt Rami Malek erneut einen exzentrischen, schwulen Künstler. Abermals geht es um AIDS in den 1980er Jahren – und dennoch ist Sachs’ queeres Drama denkbar weit vom Freddie-Mercury-Biopic entfernt. Als Theaterschauspieler und Sänger Jimmy George sammelt Malek darin trotz schwerer Erkrankung alle Kräfte für eine Bühnenrückkehr, während sich um ihn ein Liebesdreieck entwickelt. So groß das Drama um Liebe, Tod, Überlebenskampf und das Leben (im Moment) auch ist, so minimalistisch, von Auslassungen geprägt und emotional zurückgenommen ist die Inszenierung, die tränenschwere Gefühle nur in den Gesangseinlagen herausbrechen lässt. (Sascha Rettig)

In Anwesenheit von Ira Sachs.
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Jimmy George is a charismatic downtown performer whose illness is starting to impinge on his liberated lifestyle. Determined to live fully in the time that remains, he throws himself into rehearsals with his theatre troupe for an adaptation of Michel Tremblay’s Once Upon a Time in the East, even as his condition increasingly affects his mind and body alike. At the same time, he oscillates between the quiet devotion offered by his long-term partner and caregiver Dennis and the intense, revitalising passion of a new affair with his young neighbour Vincent. After the restrained intimacy of PETER HUJAR’S DAY (2025), THE MAN I LOVE adopts a more melodramatic form, structured around a “final” spectacle in the manner of a classical musical. Yet it retains Sachs’s penchant for quiet, lingering observation and an unmistakable focus on performance. Rami Malek is stellar in a forceful, heartbreaking role as a luminous soul slowly fading, while the cast around him imbue each moment with erotic and tragic energy. Like the classical cinema that inspires it, this is a film in which the unspoken matters of the heart find their expression in gesture: glances and embraces carry the intensity and raw emotional truth in this unflinching portrait of the 1980s AIDS crisis. (Salvador Amores)

Ira Sachs: THE DELTA (1996), FORTY SHADES OF BLUE (2005), MARRIED LIFE (2007), KEEP THE LIGHTS ON (2012), LOVE IS STRANGE (2014), LITTLE MEN (2016), FRANKIE (2019), PASSAGES (2023), PETER HUJAR’S DAY (2025)