There’s no doubt about it, it’s all in the eyes: an ice-blue stare, locked on you, promising satisfaction and loyalty without asking for anything in return. That’s what love is, and Dan Stevens is the humanoid robot here to give it to us.
One step further than the ideal man, Stevens is Tom, the product of a scientific experiment designing artificial life that can act as, and maybe even one day replace, your perfect romantic partner. He’s paired with scientist Alma (Maren Eggert) who agrees to live with Tom for three weeks in order to convince the labs to give her extra funding for her own research project. She’s pretty sure she’s perfectly happy the way she is, that this robot, this thing, won’t possibly be able to give her what she wants – and she doesn’t even know what that would look like. But happiness, as we know, is a complex, unknowable thing: desire, urgency, necessity, and ambition bleed into one another, and what makes rational sense one second becomes the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in the next.
German actress Maria Schrader returns to directing for her third feature, undoubtedly her most well-rounded, exciting work yet. She takes stock of a short story by Emma Braslavsky, and the script, co-written by Jan Schomburg, is what catapults “I’m Your Man” beyond comparison, into something diamond-sharp – witty, hopeful, wry, sincere, and sly all at once.
Still, for the sake of clarity, it’s worth running through the brilliant titles to which Schrader’s singular film seems at least something of a valentine to. Tom, and other humanoids like him, are designed, to make their chosen person happy – Jessica Hausner’s botanical thriller “Little Joe” springs to mind, with its stubborn study of just how far one might go in order to experience that sense of unadulterated bliss. Naturally, when setting your sights on a relationship between a human and non-human, something along the lines of “Her” or “Ex Machina” is woven into the DNA – except Stevens’ Tom is more flesh-and-blood believable, more human and seductive than any of those other AI characters. And then last year’s Amazon Prime Video anthology series “Soulmates” offered one of the first examinations of the danger and allure of finding your person, the one other human soul promising to complete you. If you could, would you do it? At what cost? Would you sign your life away if eternal peace was waiting in their arms?
Alma isn’t so sure. “Love doesn’t interest you at all? Tenderness? Butterflies?” Tom asks her on their first night at home, as she politely explains not just her skepticism but her simple contentment she finds in being alone. “Soon, I’ll say and do things you like with a much higher success rate,” her superhuman lover tells her – but there’s a difference between being told about feelings and actually experiencing them yourself. Eggert plays this tug of war with compelling subtlety, leading with her apprehension but flowering emotionally in brief glimpses of unfamiliar joy, too. It’s loosely reminiscent of Schrader’s last directorial outing with Netflix miniseries “Unorthodox,” which gave Shira Haas her breakout role as an Orthodox Jewish woman discovering life beyond religion. It’s in the tiny glances that catch you off guard, the rush of adrenaline and pleasure that you thought only belonged in fairytales that suddenly color your world a little bit warmer. Alma says it best, when asked by Tom about, well, the wonders of the female orgasm. “It’s like dissolving. You dissolve, and you’re part of something bigger.”
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Although, without Tom, Alma would not have dissolved into anything. This is, without a doubt, Dan Stevens’ greatest performance in years – and the British actor’s first one delivered fully in German. His conventional, angular good looks are hardly revolutionary, but Stevens is using his body language differently, here. Those blue eyes, usually kind and warm, are frozen in a moment, enslaved to the algorithms, and directing every other part of his body with a hypnotic sense of rhythm. There’s a kind of mechanical subservience that shows you he’s not exactly like us, while flashes of discreet, candid humor prove that it might not be such a bad thing. The most desperately affectionate forms of love are usually framed in shades of sickly melodrama, but Stevens finds a way to make Tom sipping champagne in a bathtub filled with rose petals look like a razor-sharp comedic genius. “I’m Your Man” proves, then, that it’s about the specific people (or in this case, non-people) and unique feelings, brand new with every relationship, that will always matter more than the scenarios, stereotypes, or clichés we think we know – and resent – so well.
More than a sardonic subversion of the tropes we fall for time after time, Schrader’s thoughtful romantic study digs into mundane neuroses and existential fears with wisdom, and empathy, making sure to keep you guessing long after Alma and Tom have stopped gazing into each other’s eyes. Romantic yet level-headed, charming but always clear-eyed. A film that understands the exhausting artifice of unreciprocated love, the guilt of happiness that doesn’t feel earned, the selfish desire to just rip up the entire rulebook to chase the incandescent glee of finally, however fleetingly, understanding the magic of finding another being that makes you feel like the best version of yourself. Who cares how you got there? [B+]
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