‘The Man I Love’ Review: Rami Malek Has His Best Role Since ‘Bohemian Rhapody’ in Ira Sachs’s Delicate and Touching ’80s Character Study

He plays a performance artist who has AIDS in a New York period piece that's disarmingly precise and alive to the moment.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Ira Sachs’s “The Man I Love” is a stirringly offbeat drama, small and delicate and disarmingly precise, with a performance by Rami Malek that, if there’s any justice, should finally quiet down all the reviewers who’ve always been so snarky about him. This actor has been a critical whipping boy ever since “Bohemian Rhapsody” (2018), which somehow became — at least, in the eyes of too much of the media — not a zesty, enjoyable, and flawed rock biopic but some sort of weird crime against humanity. Sorry, but it was a highly watchable movie, and Malek’s arresting authenticity as Freddie Mercury is what took you through it. 

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