A Single Man
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A Single Man -- Film Review
By Deborah Young
Bottom Line: Sensitive and stylish, Tom Ford appeals beyond gay audiences.
VENICE -- Designer Tom Ford makes a surprisingly successful leap from the fashion industry to the big screen with "A Single Man," a standout directing debut about a gay college professor who loses his longtime partner. The theme of the search for meaning after a great loss is developed with great sensitivity thanks to Colin Firth's moving performance in the main role -- for which he won the best actor prize here -- and should help the film go beyond gay audiences to attract the more mainstream attention of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Far From Heaven."
Based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, the screenplay by Ford and David Scearce is concise. It opens with a fatal car crash in 1962, in which Jim (Matthew Goode) is killed. George Falconer (Firth) learns about his lover's death the next day when a relative phones, but he is warned not to attend the funeral of the man he lived with for 16 years.
Brokenhearted and alone, he seeks comfort from his long-ago-flame-now-friend Charley (Julianne Moore), who obviously still is in love with him. But George is too devastated to be interested in either sex and even rebuffs the approach of a hot young hustler (Jon Kortajarena, a true James Dean look-alike). He tries to avoid getting involved with his student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), who is just discovering his sexual preferences and aggressively courting the older man. Instead, he makes plans for committing suicide.
In contrast to Firth's underplaying, the directing has its overblown, operatic soul. Ford is unafraid of such cringeworthy moments as playing an opera solo over a suicide attempt or having a nattily dressed symbolic figure in Tom Ford Menswear give the kiss of death to the recently departed.
In the same spirit, tech work is satisfyingly bold. Dan Bishop's stylish production design and Eduard Grau's cinematography set the film in a romantically idealized '60s world. The film score written by Abel Korzeniowski and Shigeru Umebayashi is variegated and full of lush orchestral themes that salute Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann, among others.
Venue: Venice Film Festival
Production company: Fade to Black, Depth of Field
Cast: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode, Nicholas Hoult, Jon Kortajarena
Director: Tom Ford
Screenwriters: Tom Ford, David Scearce based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood
Executive producers:
Producers: Tom Ford, Chris Weitz, Andrew Miano, Roberto Salerno with Jason Alisharan
Director of photography: Eduard Grau
Production designer: Dan Bishop
Music: Abel Korzeniowski
Additional music: Shigeru Umebayashi
Costumes: Arianne Phillips
Editor: Joan Sobel
99 minutes
A Single Man -- Film Review
By Deborah Young
Bottom Line: Sensitive and stylish, Tom Ford appeals beyond gay audiences.
VENICE -- Designer Tom Ford makes a surprisingly successful leap from the fashion industry to the big screen with "A Single Man," a standout directing debut about a gay college professor who loses his longtime partner. The theme of the search for meaning after a great loss is developed with great sensitivity thanks to Colin Firth's moving performance in the main role -- for which he won the best actor prize here -- and should help the film go beyond gay audiences to attract the more mainstream attention of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Far From Heaven."
Based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, the screenplay by Ford and David Scearce is concise. It opens with a fatal car crash in 1962, in which Jim (Matthew Goode) is killed. George Falconer (Firth) learns about his lover's death the next day when a relative phones, but he is warned not to attend the funeral of the man he lived with for 16 years.
Brokenhearted and alone, he seeks comfort from his long-ago-flame-now-friend Charley (Julianne Moore), who obviously still is in love with him. But George is too devastated to be interested in either sex and even rebuffs the approach of a hot young hustler (Jon Kortajarena, a true James Dean look-alike). He tries to avoid getting involved with his student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), who is just discovering his sexual preferences and aggressively courting the older man. Instead, he makes plans for committing suicide.
In contrast to Firth's underplaying, the directing has its overblown, operatic soul. Ford is unafraid of such cringeworthy moments as playing an opera solo over a suicide attempt or having a nattily dressed symbolic figure in Tom Ford Menswear give the kiss of death to the recently departed.
In the same spirit, tech work is satisfyingly bold. Dan Bishop's stylish production design and Eduard Grau's cinematography set the film in a romantically idealized '60s world. The film score written by Abel Korzeniowski and Shigeru Umebayashi is variegated and full of lush orchestral themes that salute Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann, among others.
Venue: Venice Film Festival
Production company: Fade to Black, Depth of Field
Cast: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode, Nicholas Hoult, Jon Kortajarena
Director: Tom Ford
Screenwriters: Tom Ford, David Scearce based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood
Executive producers:
Producers: Tom Ford, Chris Weitz, Andrew Miano, Roberto Salerno with Jason Alisharan
Director of photography: Eduard Grau
Production designer: Dan Bishop
Music: Abel Korzeniowski
Additional music: Shigeru Umebayashi
Costumes: Arianne Phillips
Editor: Joan Sobel
99 minutes