I'm Your Man
Entry updated 22 September 2025. Tagged: Film.
German film (2021; original title Ich bin dein Mensch). Letterbox Filmproduktion/SWR. Directed by Maria Schrader. Written by Jan Schomburg and Maria Schrader, based on Emma Braslavsky's story "Ich bin dein Mensch: Ein Liebeslied" (in 2029 – Geschichten von Morgen, anth 2019, ed Stefan Brandt, Christian Granderath and Manfred Hattendorf). Cast includes Maren Eggert, Sandra Hüller, Hans Lõw and Dan Stevens. 105 minutes. Colour.
Alma (Eggert) is an expert on ancient Sumerian artefacts, who is attempting to prove that cuneiform tablets contain previously undiscovered poetry. She agrees to be one of ten people who lives with an Android, as her boss is on an ethics committee tasked to decide whether or not they should be given limited human rights. The company that supply the androids believe that they can be used to give humans greater happiness, and would make ideal romantic partners. Tom (Stevens) is outwardly so close to human that very few people can tell he is a Robot. Alma is annoyed at Tom's attempts to please her by using algorithms to work out exactly what she wants, and insists she is not looking for any romantic attachments.
As Tom grows seemingly more human, he and Alma get closer, including having Sex, but she is still insistent that he is just a Machine and that there will always be an unbridgeable gap between them. Her feelings are exacerbated when she realizes that the woman who has supplied her with Tom is also an android, and by a setback in her career when Tom discovers that another researcher will be beating her to publication with the same findings. She insists that Tom return to the company, and writes a report recommending that robots cannot be allowed to be partners with humans, as having every want and need fulfilled immediately cannot be good for people. She discovers that Tom has not returned to the company, where he would presumably be wiped. She travels to a place of her youth where she had fallen for a boy also called Tom, and finds the android Tom waiting for her there. Any further developments between them are left ambiguous.
This is an intelligent, enjoyable and extremely well-acted film, whose focus is on what makes us human, and what boundaries we use to define humanity. This manifests in the potential for poetry in seemingly utilitarian ancient texts, and the loss of Memory in dementia sufferers, as well as the boundaries between android and human, all lightly incorporated into what is basically a romantic comedy. This formula perhaps unsurprisingly results in a vagueness in details: no attempt is made to explain the science behind the androids, and there is barely a cursory look at the social implications or public perception of robots in society. It also comes perhaps too close to the romantic comedy genre's frequent assumption that a single woman who is successful in her career really just needs a man to make her happy, although the pleasingly ambiguous ending goes some way to mitigate this. The abiding memory of the film is the chemistry between Eggert and Stephens, perfectly capturing both the closeness and the gulf between human and robot.
Eggert won the award for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin Film Festival, and the film swept most of the major prizes at the German Film Awards in 2022. [CWa]
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