A Single Man

Director: Tom Ford
Cast: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult and Matthew Goode
Releasing in cinemas: 25 February 2010
Rated: M

Colin Firth outshines flashy visual treatment

There’s no doubt whatever that A Single Man is an actors’ film. It’s the first foray into direction by the noted fashion designer Tom Ford, with a screenplay broadly based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood. Being a dialogue driven affair it would smack of filmed theatre, but perhaps to counterbalance the bleakness, Ford’s tricked it out with pretty images, fashionable sets and costumes often observed in extreme close-ups. It’s also the movie which gave competent British thespian Colin Firth the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival, and now an Oscar nomination.

Set in California during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, college professor George Falconer (Colin Firth) battles to come to terms with the accidental death of his long time lover Jim (Matthew Goode). 52 years-old and British to the bootstraps, George is cool and detached; always impeccably outfitted in fashionable clothes and stylish glasses. We follow George through what could be the last day in his life. Unemotional and not relating to people easily, his closest friend is Charlie (Julianne Moore) a tippling ‘Auntie Mame’ divorcee with whom he had a brief relationship years earlier. Charlie’s still interested in George, but obviously it’s a lost cause.

George may be contemplating suicide since he has little to live for after Jim’s death. Still he keeps up appearances and goes through perhaps his final day with fastidious care. After a lecture to bored students on the fear of minorities, George becomes emotionally involved with precocious young student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), who appears fascinated by the professor. There’s also a interlude with Carlos (Jon Kortajarena), a male hustler. As the end of his elegiac day looms, George precisely lays out his funeral suit and effects then takes out a revolver. However suicide isn’t that easy. The problems of being homosexual at this time in America are clearly spelt out.

Colin Firth provides the most remarkable performance of his career. He conveys inner turmoil in a restrained summation of the stiff upper lip Englishman. A role he’s been perfecting over the years since Pride and Prejudice, here’s it’s become an award-winning act. Julianne Moore (Next) gives a flamboyant reading of Charlie, leaning to the brittle side. Matthew Goode (Brideshead Revisited) appears as a gentle sad presence seen only in flashbacks, being deceased when the picture opens. Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy) is the least inspired of the cast, and is reduced to mainly mugging the camera.

Tom Ford seems more concerned with Vogue-inspired images rather than the actors. He takes great pains to provide fussy compositions which often don’t bring the players together on the screen but rather dislocate them. One pertinent shot giving frisson to the scene - with a gentle nod to Pedro Almodovar - is the Psycho poster of Janet Leigh’s frightened eyes framed behind George meeting Carlos. If designed to deter boredom, these pretty shots are held for much longer than desirable with the ponderous pacing rather defeating dramatic development. It certainly looks like the film of a fashion designer. Thankfully Firth’s fine performance overcomes the flamboyant visual treatment to provide emotional coherence.

A Single Man can be summed up as a saga of repressed grieving and isolation given focus from Firth’s understated and controlled performance, but offset by an exaggerated visual style more distracting than conducive to the melancholy mood.

John Bale