Rami Malek plays Jimmy George, an actor and performance artist known for drawing attention when he enters a room. Jimmy’s brother-in-law privately criticizes him as lazy, suggesting he could have pursued mainstream success, but Jimmy remains committed to his downtown world. Jimmy’s theater group, the Mechanicals, prepares a stage adaptation of a 1974 French-Canadian film, with Jimmy cast as a brassy singer, signaling a focus on art over commercial appeal. The story centers on a man refusing to let dying halt his creativity, set within a thriving late-’80s queer scene confronting the AIDS epidemic. Love is portrayed through the challenge of sharing limited space in a partner’s life, with Jimmy supported by a long-term lover, Dennis, through health crises including AIDS-related pneumonia.
"Malek, with his strong jaw and nocturnal animal's eyes, has an arresting face that Hollywood has tended, in the stretch since his breakout role in Mr. Robot to his ascension to Oscar-winning movie star, to treat as interesting rather than handsome. But in Sachs's latest film, which just premiered at Cannes, Malek plays someone who's accustomed to being desired and also to, in a more general sense, drawing everyone's eyes his way when he enters a room."
"His character, Jimmy George, is an actor and performance artist of a particular type of downtown renown. His brother-in-law Gene (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), while accompanying Jimmy's sister, Brenda (Rebecca Hall), and their son, Billy (Dennis Courtis), on a visit to New York, privately describes Jimmy as lazy, saying that he's talented enough to have gone to L.A. to make "real movies." Jimmy, though, is clearly where he wants to be."
"The Man I Love is about a man who refuses to let the fact that he's dying stop him from making art and about a thriving late-'80s queer scene that similarly refuses to be cowed by the AIDS epidemic decimating its population. More than either, it's about being with someone who barely has room in their life for you, a theme that Sachs has returned to in different iterations over the years, from the chaotic love triangle in Passages to Keep the Lights On 's chronicle of a yearslong relationship with a man with addiction issues."
"Jimmy's own long-term lover is a quiet man named Dennis (Tom Sturridge) who's been caring for him steadily through his health ups and downs, including a recent bout of AIDS-related pneumonia that sent"
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