Review: The Man I Love
- CANNES 2026: Ira Sachs’ late 1980s-set musical drama struggles to find the emotional truth it seems determined to attain
There is something intriguing, at least on paper, about seeing Ira Sachs venture into musical territory. With The Man I Love, premiering in the main competition of this year's Cannes Film Festival, he moves towards a more theatrical register, blending queer melodrama, fantasy and musical performance into a portrait of an actor confronting illness and mortality in late-1980s New York. Yet the experiment rarely finds the emotional truth it seems determined to attain.
Set against the backdrop of an AIDS-era city filtered through nostalgia and stylisation, the film follows Jimmy George (played by Rami Malek), a stage actor facing a life-threatening condition while preparing what may be his final major performance. Orbiting around him are former lovers, friends, colleagues and new acquaintances, all seemingly drawn into his emotional gravity.
The issue is that Jimmy never quite becomes the magnetic figure the screenplay assumes him to be. Sachs and co-writer Mauricio Zacharias repeatedly position him as someone irresistible – self-destructive, vulnerable and charismatic – but the film struggles to demonstrate why. Jimmy behaves impulsively, often selfishly and at times immaturely, yet those around him continue to project affection and devotion onto him with little dramatic justification. As a result, what we get is a sense of distance instead of ambiguity: rather than wanting to understand him, one ends up observing him from afar.
Malek’s performance does little to bridge that gap. The actor commits fully to Jimmy’s emotional volatility, but the execution often tips into mannerism. Facial expressions become exaggerated and moments of anguish feel over-signalled. It is an unusually external performance and one that constantly reminds viewers of this fact, rather than allowing them inside the character.
The ensemble does not fare much better. Tom Sturridge, Luther Ford, Rebecca Hall and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are all capable performers, yet the pic’s heightened register pushes nearly everyone towards the same note of theatrical intensity. Characters speak, sing and emote in ways that suggest depth without necessarily creating it.
Formally, The Man I Love occupies an awkward middle ground. Presented as a musical fantasia, it often feels less like a cohesive genre exercise than a patchwork of influences. Although set in the late 1980s, much of the aesthetic – from the costumes to the atmosphere – evokes an earlier decade altogether, producing an oddly untethered sense of period. Music dominates the experience, sometimes to excess. One particularly bewildering sequence layers Patti Pravo’s “La bambola” with eerie classical motifs, creating an effect that feels more distracting than expressive.
Despite running at only 95 minutes, the film frequently feels longer. Scenes stretch beyond their dramatic usefulness, nowhere more noticeably than during an extended dinner sequence in which guests take turns performing songs one after another. Rather than building emotional momentum, this repetition drains energy from the proceedings.
Visually, the movie remains unexpectedly confined. Flats, theatres, hospitals and nightclubs make up almost the entire geography, giving the piece a chamber-drama intimacy that eventually turns claustrophobic. Josée Deshaies’ cinematography lends it occasional texture, but the staging remains surprisingly static.
Most frustratingly, the film mistakes emotional declaration for emotional impact. A late sequence in which Jimmy confesses details of his addiction and sexual past to his young son through a handheld recording aims for devastating honesty, but lands somewhere between awkward and unintentionally comical.
The Man I Love’s goal is to be a mournful ode to performance, desire and impermanence. Instead, it too often feels like a film performing emotion, rather than truly expressing it.
The Man I Love was produced by SBS Films Productions (France), Assemble Media (USA) and Big Creek Projects (USA). mk2 Films is selling the feature worldwide.
Photogallery 20/05/2026: Cannes 2026 - The Man I Love
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© 2026 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it
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