A Single Man is a lavish and romantic examination of interrupted love, a chronicle of life and loss and everything that binds it together. Its mood is its truth and its imagery is all the narrative we need. It is one of the most beautiful things you will set eyes on all year.

The plot of A Single Man is confined to a single day, both routine and eventful, in the life of George Falconer (Colin Firth), a 50-something British expat who teaches literature at an unnamed Los Angeles college. The year is 1962, the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and as America teeters on the brink of cultural and political upheaval, George has resolved to end his life. Several months earlier, his lover of 16 years (Matthew Goode) was killed in an automobile accident (a tragedy that touches him most agonizingly of all but which he cannot publically grieve or participate). George, struggling unsuccessfully to find meaning after the tragedy, goes about getting his affairs in order and making preparations for his suicide.

Over the course of the day, he surreptitiously says goodbye to those closest to him, especially Charley (Julianne Moore), an immaculately coifed, aging femme fatale with whom George once shared a brief affair. Charley is now an alcoholic divorcée who has not yet come completely to terms with her friend’s sexual orientation. George also has a series of chaste encounters with other men, including a Spanish hustler, and one of his students, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult, the child star of About a Boy), who is reconciling with his own nature and stalks his professor out of a sense of kindred curiosity. These serendipitous meetings have a profound effect on George, perhaps even strong enough to show him a way out of his misery and into the hope of a brighter tomorrow.

Based on gay author Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, A Single Man marks the directorial and screenwriting debut of celebrated fashion designer Tom Ford (he dresses Daniel Craig’s Bond). Rarely has a filmmaker’s designer eye been as evident in a film as here. Every deliriously beautiful frame is composed with the utmost care and broadcasts an abstract range of themes with conviction and cinematic eloquence. Ford’s eye is unimpeachable, bursting to life with intimate macro close-ups, surreal stylistic flourishes (such as when the normally bleached, saturated gray palette suddenly blushes with color in response to characters’ emotional states), and whimsical, almost experimental touches that remind one of another artist turned director, Julian Schneibal (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).

Together with cinematographer Eduard Grau, Ford conjures a textured, stylishly elegant look at a Mad Men world of fetishistic set-pieces and architecture, luxuriating in an age when design meant precision and class. Dan Bishop’s production design exquisitely captures a hyper-idealized, Madison Avenue version of the past in which everything gleams like brand new. George is a man who resides in a world of perfectly tailored suits, a glass-and-timber Neutra-style home, Mercedes coupes and sweating martini shakers. And it’s set to the lush, sweeping music of minimalist Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski.

Colin Firth gives the performance of a lifetime as the refined, intellectual Falconer, a man who has to have everything just perfect, even his death; a man who lives a life in cloistered isolation exacerbated by his sexual orientation. Firth commands the screen whenever he is on it. His performance, elegant and nuanced, is tonally perfect. From hovering over him at the height of his grief — a moment that we observe far longer than we feel comfortable with — to non-linear flashbacks that recall his doomed love affair, Firth is consummately flawless. The Best Actor award he won at this year’s Venice Film Festival will easily translate into an Oscar nomination. Julianne Moore, while given limited screen time, nevertheless similarly sizzles.

Ford relishes in iconic queer imagery and the body beautiful ideal. His Adonises are chiseled from pure fantasy, like something from the pages of Vogue. Ford seizes control of the infamous Hollywood “male gaze” with all of its lustful longing, and turns it back on itself. The film vibrates with the thrill of the illicit seduction characters never see coming.

What makes A Single Man unique among other gay-themed films intended for mainstream, heterosexual audiences is the lead character’s acceptance of his sexual orientation. Rather than present a tortured, self-loathing figure (i.e., Brokeback Mountain), George is completely at ease with who he is. That doesn’t mean he is entirely out of the closet; this is still the early ‘60s, after all. But he does express the frustrations of a member of a misunderstood, stereotyped and reviled minority. In class, George delivers a powerful, passionate impromptu lecture about what it means to be a minority in the face of societal prejudice and fear which hates that which it does not understand. This, combined with the other aspects of the film, make it, quite possibly, the best gay-themed movie ever made, though it is wildly irresponsible to label it only as a gay film. While he does nothing to hide it (indeed, the film is undeniably erotic), Ford sublimates the homosexuality of his characters, preferring instead to tell a love story with which anyone, regardless of gender or orientation, can identify.

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.