Rami Malek stars as theatre actor Jimmy George, around whom the AIDS storyline revolves. He has one good monologue about his unhinged years of rampant sex and drugs, but I’m not so sure what attracted him to this project otherwise. He’s pleasing to watch in it (when he’s not excruciatingly weird, which also arises), snappily dressed in cute attire that’s designed to seem vintage. Malek can be so cartoonish-looking that it’s easy to forget what a classically handsome face he has when it’s filmed just right, often when he’s in repose and therefore not tampering with the vibe. His smaller, slighter build belies the handsome squareness of his head and jawline, so that when he’s in drag in an ornate pink blouse and platinum blonde wig in some scenes (in a theatrical subplot that makes no real sense whatsoever), it only serves as a reminder that his face is too masculine to be suitable for drag. A few scenes in which he’s more unhinged threw into question for me whether his Oscar for portraying Freddie Mercury may have been a bit of a fluke.
The supporting players are fine overall: Tom Sturridge as Jimmy’s boyfriend Dennis, Luther Ford as Jimmy’s red-headed side piece Vincent, and Rebecca Hall as Jimmy’s sister Brenda. While they all seemingly care about Jimmy’s plight, there’s also not quite enough at play to truly connect the characters fruitfully, nor to make them more individually distinguished. The movie kind of ambles along fairly aimlessly, drifting along on what I’m sure Ira Sachs intended to seem both referential and reverential. Social media certainly doesn’t help with very much, but occasionally seeing Ira Sachs’ posts on Instagram pop up on my phone screen made it clear that he's serious about his reading and viewing, both historically and aesthetically, though I feel like that’s a bit of a dead end in most of his movies. I liked the playful gay imagery and attitudes that kept me attentive during the first half of The Man I Love, but the film reached no real sense of resolution or even engagement for me, ultimately.
Which is why I sat there thinking instead about all of the movies that haven’t really worked for me this year in so many ways. I recently saw a comment by a famous director that kept floating through my mind while I was watching the second half of the film. He said not all films are art, fortunately, nor does he expect them to be, mainly because it’s important as a film director to study closely all of the movies that fail, in order to learn as much from them as the movies that manage to achieve some sort of seamlessness or even apparent perfection. But anybody who says that hasn’t been writing movie reviews of cinematic releases, clearly, and watching nearly all of the theatrical releases each year for any duration of time. There’s so much wasted time and money out there these days, both for the filmmakers and the audience members. It’s begun to make me wonder why anybody would pour so much energy and effort into getting a film made, when so many films lately are just not quite delivering the goods. The cartoonish cuteness of Rami Malek playing gay (and Tom Sturridge doing the same), while enough to keep my attention for at least a portion of the movie, started to matter less without a stronger narrative backbone. That the characters should be in such comfortable environments at such an uncomfortable time in gay male history back in the 1980s only added to my confusion about how and why they were living that way, rather than fortifying what might actually have made them worth following, relating to, and empathizing with.
No comments:
Post a Comment