A Single Man in L.A.

A Single Man tells a story of loneliness of a university lecturer who has lost his life partner in a car accident and tries to figure out what to do next, if anything at all.
Borys Musielak

George (Colin Firth) lives in a glass / wooden house in a posh district of Los Angeles. He seems to lead a life many dream of. He's wealthly (did they really pay teachers so well in California in the fifties?) and respected. And very unhappy.

He cannot be very honest with people as he has to be hiding his homosexuality all the time, even though he's lived with Jim (Matthew Goode) for 16 years and all his friends know it. Well, to be precise, he's got only one friend -- Charlotte (Julianne Moore), a woman approximately his age who not so secretly loves him, or at least has stronger feelings towards him than the other way around.

George lives like a ghost. He does the usual things. Many people may not even notice there's anything wrong with him as he's never been a very social person anyway. But he does not have an aim and he does not seem to care anymore. One morning, he decides to get a gun and finish the misery. But before, he makes a strong commitement to live this last day of his life like no other day. To try to be kind and helpful. And honest. Perhaps for the first time in his life.

As we follow George's actions and his miserable attempts to commit suicide, we start to symphatize with him and hope he eventually changes his mind. But we also start to understand him. And this, if anything, is the main achievement of the film. We are allowed very deep inside George's emotions, his dreams and his fears. And the more we get to know him, the more we understand him and... what may sound frightening, start to understand and support his final decision.

Tom Ford: the bold and the beautiful

Tom Ford, for whom A Single Man is the first feature, is a world top fashion designer. Excuse my ignorance, I haven't heard about him before watching this movie, but obviously I'm much more into film than into fasion. Like his main character, he's also very rich and also homosexual, which is probably the reason why George's character is very convincing. The other reason for that is the tremendous performance by Colin Firth. We know this actor mostly from goofy roles like the one from Mamma Mia or Bridget Jones Diary, so it was easy to classify him as an average actor, a good fit for the supporting roles in second-rate movies. In A Single Man he proves his dramatic skills and makes me only wonder: why so late, why no one seemed to get him do it before? The winning of the best male performance of the Venice Film Festival is by no means coincidental. He truly deserved it.

So how did Tom Ford do as a director? As mentioned before, the psychology of the characters convinced me, I believed they could have behaved like this in real life. And I'm not talking only about George, but also about the supporting characters: Nicholas Hoult as George's student, and Julianne Moore as Charlotte. They're both interesting, with their little secrets which they may or may not decide to reveal.

As far as the cinematography is concerned, I found it a bit too ostentaneous, too pushy. Starting from the first scene where we see naked male bodies floating under water, there are all those visual choices that I would not call cheap, but I also would not call very sophisticated or even necessary. Same goes for the music. It seems fine at the beginning but eventually tries to overwhelm us. It's not accompanying the action but rather attempts to influence the way we perceive single scenes, influence in a bad way, meaning -- it tries to make us cry or make us care and make us suffer. It just tries to hard. It's kind of old fashioned in a way and many may find it touching or inspirational. To me it was rather irritating, but I found Slumdog Millionare irritating so don't listen to me.

Academy Award, anyone?

Talking about Slumdog... I believe A Single Man is a very strong Academy Award candidate. It has almost all the ingredients of an Oscar-winning movie: a strong plot, a minority distrimination issue. It would be a no-brainer if George was a war hero losing his lover in Badgad perhaps, but even with this flaw, I'm counting on at least 5 nominations (best movie, best director, best adapted screenplay, best actor and best supporting actress) and most likely - more.

So, is Tom Ford a new Hollywood golden boy? It's certainly quite an achievement to simply step into the film business as the screenwriter, director and producer at the same time and create a thoughtful and engaging movie that is being talked about. We're yet to see if it is going to attract wider audience, but my wild guess is that it will be a success.

Official trailer:
This review is part of my BFI 53rd London Film Festival coverage.