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A Single Man (2009)

Director: Tom Ford

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38 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

We tend to make a fuss of debutants. We celebrate their precocity. We excuse their naivety. But sometimes the word is misleading. Take Tom Ford. ‘A Single Man’ is the 48 year old’s first film, but can we really call a man who spent ten years as the creative director of Gucci a beginner? Couture is not cinema, but there are similarities. Both have a tendency to crush art with commerce. Both demand that an army of creatives – art directors, production designers, photographers and the rest – unite behind a vision that is sold ruthlessly to the public. So it’s worth remembering that Ford’s toolbag was already full to brimming when he embarked on his first film – though whether or not he knew how to use those tools is another thing entirely.

Christopher Isherwood’s short 1964 novel ‘A Single Man’ is a superb choice for a concise, intimate film. Its events are few, its emotional power is cumulative. The book visits one day in the life of George, a gay British expat and middle-aged literature teacher in 1962 Los Angeles. We learn gradually that George lost his younger partner, Jim, in a car crash and discover much later that this is a significant day for George, a slow reveal that gives the text a random, quotidian quality.

Ford turns the book on its head so that we know both these things from the start. But other than that, the book’s interior nature and sense of wandering remain in Ford’s delicate, moving film. We follow George (Colin Firth) closely, often alone, from morning to night. We watch as he gives a lesson on Aldous Huxley and join him on a drunken evening at the home of his soulmate and compatriot, Charlotte (Julianne Moore). Later, we’re with him during a late-night flirtation with a pupil, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult). And, in flashback, we see snapshots of his earlier, happier life with Jim (Matthew Goode).

As a director, Ford manages to exude both extreme confidence and first-time nerves. Only a beginner would decide that the best way to add structure to a near-perfect story is to insert a gun from almost the very first scene. But the control and precision with which Ford tells his story helps us to ignore this choice and still trust his vision, which falls off the screen with an intoxicating fluidity, helped by evocative editing of sound and image and an increasingly affecting score by Abel Korzeniowski. The film looks gorgeous. Young Spanish DoP Eduard Gran, a graduate of the National Film and Television School, shoots on an old 35mm stock that gives the images a soft precision. Almost all the film is colour, but the colours tell a story themselves: Ford manipulates the film’s brightness so that it glows and darkens depending on George’s mood. Rather than coming across as a gimmick, this serves the emotional ebb and flow of the book well and helps to turn the literary into the cinematic.

Maybe the film is too pristine. In this world, dust doesn’t land, paint doesn’t peel and grass doesn’t grow. George’s black-and-white suit-and-tie combo is too perfect and his house is a modernist dream. His partner was an architect, we’re told. His director is a fashion designer, we’re thinking.

But nothing distracts from the empathy and understanding we have for George, and on that the film must live or die. Firth’s portrayal of a man repressing his grief while being unable to repress his instinct for love and for life is excellent and moving, while Ford’s balancing of depth and surface is precarious but ultimately winning.

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London Issue 2060: 11-17 February, 2009

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User reviews of this film

Sujit said...

Posted on Jan 06 2012 12:12 Excellent movie; Firth and Moore pitching powerful performances. Yet the ending could have been worked upon - too abrupt, too cliched and unimaginative. It is as if all aging and single adult mourning the loss of their partner have one way out with no hope for a future.

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bee redwood said...

Posted on Feb 24 2011 01:53 Time, tempo, light and emotion well tailored and scored in this beautiful meditation on love and living and the search for meaning in their absence.

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Robert Thornton said...

Posted on Nov 11 2010 07:32 Excellent slow burner. What a refreshing change not to have the stereotype camp gay. Firth was excellent. Very much an art film with the music , colour and camera shots. Having watched "An Education" the night before, which was absolute tripe, it's nice to know there is still some well made films out there.

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zzzzz said...

Posted on Apr 15 2010 19:14 this is the most boring piece of nonsense i have ever seen. it's basically a 2 hour clothes advert (which are very nice BTW). I could not even walk out for fear of offending my gay friends who i imagined were having some homosexual enlightenment moment. (relieved to find out afterwards they were as bored as me. Maybe there is a reason this was originally a short story?
At least it has a happy ending.

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Sutton said...

Posted on Apr 10 2010 12:15 Excellent film, stylishly shot and acted - great debut for Mr Ford. Go see..

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Dominic said...

Posted on Mar 31 2010 00:26 It's good, but it needed Stanley Baker not Colin Firth in the lead part.

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Ant said...

Posted on Mar 22 2010 11:58 For the gay man in you or your life...

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anna said...

Posted on Mar 19 2010 12:21 Boring boring boring. Love Colin but even his great performance didn't save the movie. What a disappointment.

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critique said...

Posted on Mar 12 2010 22:32 An interesting character study filmed in a very individualistic manner. Firth is charismatic and there are moments of beauty but one or two sequences drag.

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milddavids said...

Posted on Mar 09 2010 21:04 utter tosh, I didnt believe the firth character, the dialogue was wooden as was most of the acting, you get more wit pathos and humour in an average episode of Skins.

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jazzy j said...

Posted on Mar 08 2010 23:50 I loved the film. I cried at the beginning, I cried in the middle, I cried at the end; I felt such a wuss but the emotional angst got to me . The overwhelming grief of losing your lover, your life, everything you'd built up over years of togetherness and not being able to open up and be yourself in your pain, to have your whole life taken and not be able to say why or how it tears you apart. As a piece it was a beautifully crafted film, my only negative was in the last 5 minutes where it drifted into standard symbolism but was redeemed at the last by the mirroring of the opening sequence (which set me off crying again) Not a perfect film but wonderful and painful to watch, a visual torchsong which I would most certainly go see again .

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rick said...

Posted on Mar 06 2010 18:09 Was really looking forward to this movie but oh boy was I disappointed! And bored! Yes Colin's performance saves the movie. I usually love Julianne but can't excuse the fact that she did a parody of AbFab here. How can one take this film seriously? The script is very very poor. Dialogues made me cringe most of the time - until I decided to laugh instead. The scene with the Spanish hooker at sunset was a monument to kitsch. And that musical score made me want to run.

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shel said...

Posted on Mar 03 2010 23:25 best film I've seen in at least a year - I had a smile of wonderment on my face throughout - it was beautiful and heartfelt and really touched me. Loved it. Yes it was all too perfect and clean to be real - but why do people criticise it here but accept a complete departure from reality in crap films like avatar?

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CAROL MILES said...

Posted on Feb 25 2010 21:09 Yes Colin Firth was the picture. But you few Firth fans - you must be very lonely.

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usman khawaja said...

Posted on Feb 20 2010 11:19 archgate i agree there are some pretentious shots and artifice here which does distract but most of it works better than brokeback which was like a gay love epic high on style -i wish ford had edited a few of the more stylistic sequences as they did mar the narrative but he can be forgiven as this is his debut -and i agree with dave calhoun -it is a triumph for colin and more for moore and i hope she wins but i think it will go to monique for precious for political reasons tho i liked precious too ,but moore was excellent .

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