A Single Man

It’s hard not to feel out of place in Tom Ford’s impeccably stylish and alluring world. George Falconer is the tragic embodiment of its searing beauty, a single man trudging through a single day.

George (Colin Firth), a middle-aged, gay English professor, is still reeling from the tragic death of his partner Jim (Matthew Goode). Although he exists in dreamy 1962 Los Angeles, George feels he’s playing a part and urges himself to “just get through the g—ddamn day.”

The film chronicles his tedious suffering cut with fleeting recognition of beauty in life. Smooth-haired fox terriers and California bars serve as constant reminders of a happier, fuller life with Jim. George commiserates with his oldest friend and fellow ex-pat Charley (Julianne Moore) and eventually finds a glimmer of hope in the attention of an infatuated student, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), who returns the restrained and unmoved George to the world. 

In his directorial and screenwriting debut, Ford outfits his interpretation of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel in a quintessentially masculine style. It is a chimerical vision of the ‘60s, one that combines Ford’s acute sense of fashion, stemming from a legendary career as Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent’s creative director, with charming personal notes from his life.

Ford’s best insight is not the film’s stylish lacquer, but his dead-on casting of Firth. A Single Man is a character study at its core, and Firth breathes life and compassion into a film brimming with kitschy pink Sobranie cigarettes and vintage Mercedes. Although Moore convincingly plays Charley as George’s out-of-prime ex-flame, the character falls into Ford’s polished and quixotic backdrop to a fault. 

The visual style of the film uses captivating color transformations, which shift with George’s mood and into black and white with flashbacks. Firth is the perfect foil to Ford’s most extreme fashionable excesses, and none of the director’s sleek contrivances diminish the film’s emotional resonance.