CANNES, France \u2014 In Ira Sachs\u2019 1980s-set drama \u201cThe Man I Love,\u201d Rami Malek finds the most well-tailored role since his Oscar-winning portrayal of Freddie Mercury in \u201cBohemian Rhapsody.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Sachs\u2019 film, which is a competition entry at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, likewise centers on a performer dying of AIDS, it\u2019s otherwise an altogether different and dramatically more personal tale about art, love and death.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took me a minute to realize it was more about life,\u201d Malek said in an interview alongside Sachs on a terrace in Cannes. \u201cThere\u2019s a threat looming throughout, but it\u2019s an undercurrent. Throughout the film there\u2019s a cacophony of sound and imagery and beauty that is filling your soul.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film, which is for sale in Cannes, has earned Malek \u2014 an actor who has sometimes struggled to find well-suited roles since his breakout in \u201cMr. Robot\u201d \u2014 some of the best reviews of his career.<\/p>\n
Sachs, the New York indie filmmaker of \u201cPassages\u201d and \u201cLove Is Strange,\u201d knew he wanted an actor with an ineffable star quality.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I saw in \u2018Mr. Robot\u2019 was a very natural actor and someone who has an ability where you don\u2019t know how they get from one word to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Man I Love,\u201d Malek plays Jimmy George, a New York performance artist who\u2019s trying to continue performing despite his illness. His partner (Tom Sturridge) diligently cares for him while a man (Luke Ford) who moves into the same building immediately falls for Jimmy.<\/p>\n Rami Malek poses for portrait photographs for the film ‘The Man I Love’ at the 79th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. Credit: AP\/Scott A Garfitt<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n It\u2019s not a movie filled with medication and hospital visits. Instead, it captures a performer desperately trying to continue on. <\/p>\n Sachs said he wanted \u201ca rapturous film.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to make a film that contained all the things that I\u2019ll miss when I\u2019m gone,\u201d said the filmmaker. \u201cI wanted it to be suffused with emotion and pain and skin. It\u2019s a sexy film. It has color and music. You could say it\u2019s a list of pleasures or sins.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the movie\u2019s most overwhelming scenes are of Jimmy rehearsing or performing. In a heartbreaking showstopper, he sings the 1970 Melanie hit \u201cWhat Have They Done to My Song Ma\u201d to his family.<\/p>\n Rami Malek poses for portrait photographs for the film ‘The Man I Love’ at the 79th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. Credit: AP\/Scott A Garfitt<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n \u201cIt came straight from my soul,\u201d says Malek. \u201cIt\u2019s a moment in the film when Jimmy has some sense of clarity as to what\u2019s coming. There is this stubborn refusal to keep creating in the most desperate of times that emanates through this film. It imbued me with this sense of, \u2018Oh, I can be dangerous. I can take things to a limit that I haven\u2019t before.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The 1980s has deep importance to the 60-year-old Sachs, who began working in New York in 1984. He was inspired by the stories of performance artists like John Kelly and John Jesurun<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re the ones who told me about the last night that the comedian Frank Maya was on stage and he lost the ability to finish his act,\u201d Sachs says. \u201cJohn Kelly told me about Ethyl Eichelberger performing and having sweat drenching his face.\u201d<\/p>\n Malek calls Sachs \u201ca library,\u201d whose connection to the time of \u201cThe Man I Love\u201d fueled his curiosity.\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThat confidence generated a performance in me that I didn\u2019t know I was giving,\u201d Malek says. \u201cBut I knew I was doing something unique. I didn\u2019t know it would translate.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newsday.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CANNES, France \u2014 In Ira Sachs\u2019 1980s-set drama \u201cThe Man I Love,\u201d Rami Malek finds the most well-tailored role since his Oscar-winning portrayal of Freddie Mercury in \u201cBohemian Rhapsody.\u201d While Sachs\u2019 film, which is a competition entry at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, likewise centers on a performer dying of AIDS, it\u2019s otherwise an altogether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2426334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[359676,21741,21912,24047,307696],"class_list":["post-2426333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ap-a-wire","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-theater","tag-wires-bot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Rami-Malek-explores-art-love-and-death-in-Ira-Sachs.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2426333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2426335,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426333\/revisions\/2426335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2426334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2426333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2426333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2426333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Rami](\"https:\/\/www.newsday.com\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.newsday.com%2Fimage-service%2Fversion%2Fc%3AYTkyNDY0NjEtOWEwOS00%3AN2YxYTc1YTEtMTE0ZS00%2Fcopy-of-france-cannes-2026-the-man-i-love-portraits.jpeg%3Ff%3DLandscape%2B16%253A9%26w%3D768%26q%3D1&w=1920&q=80\"\/)