The existence of art for art’s sake is always wonderful to see. It might not necessarily meet the moment or fill a need, but people have gone to some trouble to create it and this hard work and good cheer is always fascinating. The Man I Love is precisely just such a work of art. It serves no explicit purpose, it has no moral instruction for us and ends on a note of – well, it depends on how you look at it. The Man I Love is therefore an act of the highest defiance, a triumph of art over death.
It’s the late 1980s in downtown New York City, and Jimmy George (Rami Malek) is the star of an avant-garde theatre group called The Mechanicals, whose other members include characters portrayed by Sasha Lane and playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis. Now that Jimmy is out of the hospital they can begin rehearsing their new production, a live performance of the camp 1974 Canadian movie Once Upon a Time in the East. Jimmy lives with his partner Dennis (Tom Sturridge, whose low-key energy is perfect for the part), who has a straight job and all the caretaking responsibilities. Their relationship used to be happy, but it’s no longer a match of equals and Jimmy cannot and will not admit that. Meanwhile a young Brit named Vincent (Luther Ford making a big impression in his first film role) moves downstairs, meets Jimmy in passing, and becomes entranced. Dennis is something Vincent can easily ignore, but Jimmy’s health not so much. But as we all know, the dick wants what it wants. And if there’s anything Jimmy wants these days, it’s a handsome and eager distraction.
Rebecca Hall and Ebon Moss-Bachrach have an elegant little sequence as the supportive sister and brother-in-law who love Jimmy exactly as he is though they wish he was easier to love. Jimmy doesn’t take responsibility for himself, physically or emotionally, but he is such an astounding performer that he gets away with a lot. Well, kind of; everyone who knows him knows that you are always wondering if he is playing a part. His fellow actors adore him, and watching Mr. Malek in rehearsal use up every ounce of that adoration in order to ignore the reality of his health is the agony of the film. Mr. Malek really is very good, needy without being cloying, camp without being kitsch, flamboyant without the self-hatred that so often spoils portrayals of such openly queer characters. The scene where Mr. Malek makes a recording to celebrate his parents’ milestone wedding anniversary, which turns into him taunting them with his homosexuality, including an explicit list of explicit achievements, is as nasty as things get.
But even though director Ira Sachs, who co-wrote the script with Mauricio Zacharias, has been clear this is a tribute to the lost world of those days, what we never quite get from inside The Man I Love is why this story had to be made now. Unfortunately the answer is the context of the current political situation in the USA. We seem to be going back to the bad old days of queerness and homosexuality being hated and hunted. The return to secrecy, blackmail and self-loathing as life choices outside of the stereotypical norm are punished. And this includes the dangers of disease spreading unchecked as people daren’t risk medical attention of their personal choices. It’s horrible to think about, but it’s worse to live, and we can’t ask most of the people from the downtown New York art scene of the 1980s what they think about it because they are no longer with us. But The Man I Love exists for its own sake, to be a thing of beauty in an ugly world, and that is more than enough.
The Man I Love recently played at the Cannes Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the Cannes site for the title.
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