Review by Andrew Swafford
In I’m Your Man, a woman agrees to take part in a scientific study in which she enters into a temporary relationship with an android designed to be her dream partner.
More importantly, though, the android in question is played by Dan Stevens, a ridiculously handsome British actor who turned in one of the greatest performances of the 2010s with The Guest, a throwback action-horror film about American Imperialism that was way better than it had any right to be. In The Guest, Stevens’s character is secretly a genetically-enhanced supersoldier who can both become a killing machine at the drop of a hat and charm the pants off anyone he talks to, whether the person is looking for a sexual partner or a shoulder to cry on. He nails this performance, as Dan Stevens has a steely charisma about him – at once disarming and menacing – that hasn’t felt quite right in the middling projects he’s taken on since. Playing the Beast in Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast remake and Charles Dickens in a Christmas Carol making-of biopic just feels like a waste of this actor’s very singular talent.
I’m Your Man, however, is a great showcase for Stevens. This is a sci-fi film with no real special effects, so he has to sell an early malfunction with just his body language, and does so perfectly. Playing an android designed to be marriage material, he trades the burly, imposing posture of The Guest for one that feels more slender and soft, though I’m not sure if he’s gone through any sort of actual bodily transformation – it may just be the way he holds himself. Stevens’s character, Tom, wears button-ups and asks politely curious questions and smirks gently and respects boundaries and leaves rose-petal trails to candlelit baths. He’s designed to be the average woman’s fantasy, based on the supposedly extensive research of the company who created him. The conflict of the film, however, is that its protagonist, Alma (played by Maren Eggert), isn’t actually interested in love – she’s a workaholic who only took on this project for the grant money it would provide for her anthropological research. After bringing Tom home like a foster dog, she restricts him to sleeping (which, for an android, looks a lot like standing stock still) in a cluttered guest room, paying as little attention to him as possible. Tom’s attempts at winning her heart are met with complete disregard for a very long while; it’s as if the rom-com trope of “eventual lovers who can’t stand each other at first” is stretched out to the furthest extent possible.
I’m Your Man is a kind of a rom-com, of course, in addition to being a soft sci-fi film, and the protagonist does eventually drift towards her humanoid admirer. It’s a melancholy sort of drifting, however. The film culminates with lilting monologues about the true nature of love, desire, and loneliness, but I didn’t come away from it with any sort of profound insight about these things. The film tells much more than it shows, which is in stark contrast to another movie I couldn’t help thinking about while watching: intentionally or unintentionally, I’m Your Man feels like a response or elaboration on the ideas about human-AI romance laid out in Spike Jonze’s film Her. Unfortunately, Schrader’s film is a bit too low-key – both visually and emotionally – to ever reach the emotional heights of Jonze’s film. I was excited by the idea of a woman director tackling themes so similar to Jonze’s male-centric romantic lament, but this ultimately felt like a somewhat underwhelming riff on familiar subject matter.