Colin Firth is George, an English Professor living in Los Angeles. It's 1962, the Cuba missile crisis is looming and George has just lost the love of his life, Jim, in a fatal car accident while being away from L.A.
A Single Man was co-written (an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's novel) and directed by Tom Ford, an American fashion designer who previously worked for Gucci and is now running his own fashion label (Colin Firth is of course wearing Tom Ford gear in the film). This is Ford's first film, as a writer, producer and director. That bio made me expect the worst and I was very pleasently surprised. A Single Man is a beautiful, sensual, sad and romantic film: slowly paced and yet fully capturing your attention, you feel compelled to step into George's emotionally upset world while he is trying so hard to convey the image of control on the surface. The fact that George is homosexual is mostly irrelevant; this is the portrait of a lonely man who lost his love of 16 years and stands at a breaking point in his life.
The film is beautifully shot and scored and Colin Firth delivers a stunning performance - his subtlety, the nuances in his play, conveying deep feelings with so little effort, earned him an Acadamy Award nomination in 2010 (he lost to Jeff Bridges, who got the award for his performance in Crazy Heart - not undeservedly, I may add), of course followed by winning the award one year later for "The King's Speech". Firth carries the film, but he is supported by the brilliant Julianne Moore and two young talented Englishmen, Matthew Goode (Match Point, Watchmen, Cemetery Junction) and Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy, The Weather Man, the Channel 4 programme Skins, and soon to be seen in the prequel X-Men: First Class). Tom Ford has given us a beautiful work of art - I am looking forward to his future work!
The Blu-Ray provides very good picture and sound quality - this is obviously not a disc to show off your home cinema system, but I think it's still worth the upgrade from the DVD. Only extras are a 16 minute "Making of" and an Audio Commentary by Tom Ford.
7.5/10 - watch this if you liked American Beauty. If you felt uncomfortable watching Brokeback Mountain or My Own Private Idaho, get some therapy to sort out your homophobia and then watch this film.
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