Directed by Tom Ford
Screening at Lido Cinemas
As a single man myself I approached this film with hope for the kind of personal resonances you sometimes get from a quality work of art. Perhaps it would give instruction on how to negotiate the pitfalls of a monastic existence, how to offset loneliness in middle age through bookishness, alcoholism and great dress sense. Not possessing the last quality - and not being, like Colin Firth's character, an English homosexual academic on the US west coast during the Cuban missile crisis, bereaved after the unexpected death of my lover of 16 years - "A Single Man"'s life lessons didn't turn out to be all that useful. I think I might hold off making the ultimate sacrifice until after Geoffrey Palmer turns the clock all the way back to the days of 6 o'clock closing, hiking prices up to a level where you need to be a fucking constitutional lawyer to enjoy a tipple.
But I'm getting off topic. "A Single Man" is a damn fine film. It looks like it has been directed by a gay fashion designer, and, funnily enough, it has. Tom Ford is his name (I had to Google it) and whatever his inexperience might be behind the camera it doesn't show. Forget your blue arsed aliens or homoerotic hurt locker rooms, "A Single Man" has to be the most beautiful feature released last year. Ford films the Californian light like he's been cruising the beaches for years and gives the ladies what they want by letting our Colin relive all those Mr Darcy moments, taking his top off and wading into the water with a new young prospect, a student who's more than just bi-curious.
He also shows us Julianne Moore's freckles as never before. I came out of the theatre fearful that the cinema's reigning redheaded actress will be lucky to see 60, such are the melanomic possibilities visible on her shoulders and forearms. There are about 20 billion time bombs ticking away there.
Firth gives a career changing performance, not only looking a bit like the young Michael Caine but channelling the same kind of nuanced intensity. What could have been a stock melodrama about the anxiety and homophobia of the period becomes emotionally and aesthetically moving. Ford's framing and editing are assured, the script a well structured adaptation of Christoper Isherwood's novel, the supporting cast first rate.