REVIEW: A Single Man

Plot summary for A Single Man from fandango.com:

Fashion designer Tom Ford makes his directorial debut with this dramatic outing starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, and Matthew Goode. Ford and David Scearce adapted the story from a book by Christopher Isherwood, which tells the tragic tale of a professor's loss of his longtime partner.

It had been awhile since we'd seen an experimental indie film; A Single Man ended that streak. Visually adventurous with a capsule of a story and a standout performance from Colin Firth, it's everything a nice indie film should be.

This is fashion icon Tom Ford's first film and he comes in with his creative guns blazing. For the most part everything is beautifully constructed and shot, but he does occasionally let his creativity get the best of him, specifically shots involving unneeded closeups of eyes and lips and goofing around with the saturation levels. Fortunately Ford is aware enough as a director to know when to let Colin Firth do his a thing. In a devastating scene where Firth is learning of the death of his partner by phone, Ford shows wonderful restraint in letting the camera simply linger on Firth's face.

This scene specifically is a great example of the mastery of Firth's performance in the film. In the scene, Firth struggles to keep his composure even as he sits alone in his house, unwilling to break. With this struggle he demonstrates so much about his character and even the setting and era of the film. He struggles to hide his grief and emotion in the same way he must hide his orientation and love of another man. A wonderful job by Firth. One irritation I had with the film was that everyone kept commenting that Firth's character looked terrible, but I thought the guy looked quite dapper. It was easy to imagine Ford's involvement in costume and set design; both were hip and perfect for the setting.

With daring visuals and courageous acting, A Single Man is really the epitome of indie film. Even the plot is similar to that of a modern short story, short on the timeline, narrowly focused, tragicomic (a darkly absurd suicide preparation), and with a kicker of an ending (although maybe a bit too ironic in my opinion). All in all, a singularly pleasureful experience.

Wade: 4/5 stars
Kinsey: 4/5 stars