Review: Tom Ford’s “A Single Man”

Part of the life-story-in-a-day genre that encompasses everything from Mrs. Dalloway to A Christmas Carol to Agnès Varda’s French New Wave classic Cléo from 5 to 7, Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man ranked among the minor wave of major novels of the post-WWII era that examined the inner workings of an unequivocally gay protagonist.

Isherwood’s novel is now the basis for an extraordinarily assured directorial debut by fashion designer Tom Ford, who — with the able assistance of a crack team of performers and technicians — appears to have an instinctive gift for screen storytelling.

What’s most likely to be debated about the movie is its vivid, and some might say overwhelming, sense of visual style, an attention to handsome detail that permeates every frame. But whether viewers embrace its aesthetic as part of Ford’s worldview or get annoyed by the fashion-spread-ishness of A Single Man’s look, there’s no denying the emotional impact of this superb adaptation.

Colin Firth stars as George Falconer, a British émigré in his early 50s living in a gorgeous piece of Mid-Century Modern architecture in Los Angeles. And while the U.S. and the Soviet Union dance at the threshold of nuclear annihilation over missiles in Cuba, this college professor suffers a crisis of his own. Wracked by constant grief over the recent accidental death of his longtime partner Jim (Matthew Goode), George seems to be fading in and out of existence.

Ford (who also wrote and produced) takes us through the minutiae of George’s day from the moment he hesitatingly gets out of bed. His every motion is precise, crisp and clean, but possibly more so on this day than any other — it would appear that George is putting his affairs in order so that he can neatly end his own life. Over the course of these hours, however, we discover that this tragic figure may finally manage to envision a future for himself.

Even without Jim, George isn’t alone in the world. For one thing, there’s his old friend Charley (Julianne Moore), a boozy, blousy old pal who still carries a torch for him while fearing her own impending mortality. (Charley’s 1962 hair and makeup is about as glamorous a shield against encroaching old age as you’ll ever see.)