Ira Sachs has developed something of a cult following in recent years, as one of just a handful of directors inexplicably flying the flag for queer cinema. Including terrific recent releases including Passages and Peter Hujar’s Day, Sachs has long relished in the opportunity to tell small yet deeply personal stories with a fervent focus on LBGTQ+ themes. His latest, The Man I Love, premiered at Cannes Film Festival this year, competing in the Queer Palm, and now screens at London Film Festival.
Starring Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge, Luther Ford and Rebecca Hall, The Man I Love follows a gay theatre actor living in 1980s, navigating an AIDS diagnosis while desperately trying to hold on to his lifestyle. Sachs’ previous work has thrived by being carefully calibrated to complement each individual performer’s role in the intimate and sensitive story at hand. Once again with The Man I Love, he finds a richness and depth in the world that lies before him, approaching his layered and nuanced characters with remarkable insight, feeling both deeply personal and all-too-familiar to those who identify with these stories. Often gentle, stirring and rendered with a subtlety that makes the experience rewarding for fans of quiet, thoughtful cinema, Sachs continues to demonstrate true passion for the craft and respect for the community and its history.
But where The Man I Love comes undone is with Rami Malek’s lead performance, one that is so overly calculated it becomes distracting to the film around him. Malek chews up the scenery and swallows all the air around him; given that atmosphere and tone are so crucial in Sachs' work, one performer soaking it all up is somewhat damning to the project. Malek's work being in such contrast to the film around him means it never coalesces and the results are diminished; for want of a better term, he stands out like a sore thumb; he treats The Man I Love as a star vehicle, rather than the ensemble, character piece it is.
It doesn’t mean that The Man I Love is a complete write off though. Supporting performances from the likes of Tom Sturridge - demonstrating a stoicism as the caregiver and lover that becomes more upsetting as the film, and character arc, progresses - as well as Rebecca Hall, who possesses a magnetism and poise that imbues her underserved character with a dimension that elevates the piece considerably. Sachs’ screenplay, written alongside Mauricio Zacharias, features both a tenderness and trust in its audience. Imbued with an inevitable sadness that looms over the feature without ever overprescribing emotions or reducing itself to stereotypes designed to mollycoddle its audiences, The Man I Love is the type of incisive filmmaking we receives when artists are trusted to develop their projects from a place of insecurity.
More so than any film in recent memory, The Man I Love begs the question: how much can a miscast lead performance hinder the overall film? Rami Malek’s poorly-judged lead performance definitely undermines the film but the strong collaborative effort elsewhere continues Sachs’ tender, delicate work with an otherwise strong display of his talents - if only he could reign his lead in!