The Man I Love

Friday, September 18: This screening will be presented with open captions and live captioning for the onstage components.

The protagonist of Ira Sachs’ new drama, The Man I Love, is an actor and performance artist in 1980s New York who’s dying of AIDS. His diagnosis is central to the plot, but, just as Jimmy (Rami Malek, TIFF ‘25’s Nuremberg) remains the defiant author of his own life, Sachs eschews the familiar beats of a story about illness, instead excavating a naturalistic portrait of a group of artists in a very particular time and place.

As is fitting for such a mesmeric character, we hear about Jimmy before we see him. After a recent hospital stay, he feels more alive than ever, and is ready to concentrate his energy on a starring role in an adaptation of a work by Québécois playwright Michel Tremblay. The Man I Love lingers on impromptu performances, conversations around the dinner table, and long, grounded theatre rehearsal scenes: the communal act of creation remains central. The film's visual language is warm and inviting, prioritizing rich textures and intricate details over strict medical precision.

But this collective also carries the potential for destruction. Jimmy can be selfish and capricious, taking up all the air in the room. As well, the spectre of the disease is always present, though it often weighs more heavily on Jimmy’s devoted partner Dennis (an unshakeable Tom Sturridge, TIFF ‘23’s Widow Clicquot) and his sister Brenda (Rebecca Hall, TIFF ‘24’s The Listeners) than on Jimmy himself. The Man I Love is an idiosyncratic portrait of an artist who above all aches to create.

ROBYN CITIZEN

Content advisory: sexual content, nudity, mature themes, coarse language