I'm Your Man

I'm Your Man

Alma is a scientist at Berlin's famous Pergamon Museum. In order to obtain research funds for her studies, she accepts an offer to participate in an extraordinary experiment. For three weeks, she must live with a humanoid robot with artificial intelligence designed to allow it to morph into that of her ideal life partner. Enter Tom, a machine in human form, created to make her happy.

  • Released: 2021-07-01
  • Runtime: 105 minutes
  • Genre: Comedy, Romance
  • Stars: Maren Eggert, Dan Stevens, Sandra Hüller, Hans Löw, Annika Meier, Jürgen Tarrach, Wolfgang Hübsch, Henriette Richter-Röhl, Monika Oschek, Falilou Seck, Karolin Oesterling, Marlene Sophie Haagen, Victor Pape-Thies, Inga Busch, Amal Keller, Mignon Remé, Gabriel Munoz Munoz, Franz Schmidt, Christoph Glaubacker, Sebastian Schwarz, Annie Kathleen Trettin
  • Director: Maria Schrader
 Comments
  • danybur - 6 September 2022
    The life without you
    Summary:

    Remarkable film that with great sensitivity and intelligence and from science fiction addresses a mid-life crisis and deconstructs the love bond and romanticism, but without giving it up.

    Review

    Alma is an anthropologist who works in a Berlin museum doing research on cuneiform writing. To obtain funds, she agrees to participate in a scientific test where she must live for three weeks with an android programmed to satisfy all her wishes.

    The film by Maria Schrader (director of the Unorthodox miniseries and the film Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe) manages with this story to combine and reflect on various issues without remaining a mere anecdote.

    First of all, the German title, Ich bin dein Mensch, is significant. It is not "dein Mann" (man in the sense of male human) but "dein Mensch", which in German means man, but as a human being in general. And this distinction is relevant for everything that the film addresses. And the "Ich bin" (I am) places the title in the first person of the humanoid.

    Of course, the film reflects and acutely on the implications of relating physically and emotionally with a humanoid and algorithms-base affinity and it does so many times in the voice of Alma (an extraordinary Maren Eggert), especially when she speaks with the humanoid Tom (Dan Stevens, beautiful, perfect and measured and speaking in German). And the story is also placed on Tom's side.

    But co-writer Maria Schrader goes beyond the plots of the science fiction story and frames it in the midlife crisis that it triggers in Alma, a woman who seems to put all her energy into her profession, who is not recovered from her injuries and that he is capable of a certain aggressive cynicism. And she adds a lucid study on power relations and alterity in love ties, because What does it mean to relate to someone whose main objective is to please us? What kind of link can be established under this premise? Is there an other? Can love and happiness prosper?

    The film knows how to raise its questions not only with the spoken word and of course it outlines some answers. But his main merit lies in the realm of the ineffable (there is a remarkable scene in a forest in this sense), in the climates (which include an effective use of comedy) that it knows how to create with a sensitivity and delicacy that at times appear to the abyss and in others to hope, in this story that deconstructs the love bond and romanticism without giving it up.
  • uoduck92 - 28 March 2022
    Superb Writing
    This is the kind of writing we used to experience with the likes of Rod Serling or DC Fontana back in the 60's and 70's. Shades of the Twilight Zone are all over this picture.

    I appreciated the time saved by immediately setting the viewer in a near future where robotics and AI have converged to form the Perfect Mate, suspending disbelief right from the get go so as to open up the real story.

    Alma is a relatable character who is being hit square in the face by a mid-life crisis. Late 40's, never married workaholic with an expired biological clock who mourns the missed opportunities of her past and fears the future. Her job hit a very rough patch, her father is ill with dementia and her ex is fathering a child with his new girlfriend.

    While the viewer sees the layers of Alma's character being peeled away, they are also getting to know Tom, a robotic "perfect mate" being paired up with Alma for a trial period to academically evaluate the practicality and ability for such a concept to even exist.

    As the story progresses, we see Alma become more vulnerable and honest with herself while we see Tom evolving to meet her at every revelation, learning and adapting accordingly.

    The last ten minutes of the film were great. Summed up the morals and ethics involved with such a technology and reaching a logical conclusion, but leaving room for an emotional conclusion to override sound logic.

    In the end, what did she see when she opened her eyes?