Never has a directorial debut been quite so spectacular. Tom Ford has made the transition from fashion designer to film maker so seamlessly, with the most beautifully shot film in decades (and arguably of all time).
A Single Man is an admittedly snail-paced, bitter sweet snapshot of an English college Professor (Colin Firth) in 1960s LA, on potentially the last day of his life. Despite appearing to live the American Dream – having an incredible home straight out of the pages of Wallpaper* and a well-paid teaching job, George was contemplating killing himself. Why? Well, he just can’t get over the sudden death of his partner of 15 year, Jim (Matthew Goode), whose car crashed in the snow.
The film follows George making meticulous, and often humorous, preparations for his planned departure from the world, but of course he is intercepted by other characters who don’t quite live up to the cookie-cutter image of the neighbourhood, and take him away from his gloomy introspection for a while.
For a man on the edge of desperation, George cuts a pretty fine figure and somehow attracts the advances of no less than three acquaintances – a Spanish aspiring actor/rent boy named Carlos, his glam but tragic ‘old flame’ Charley (Julianne Moore) and Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), a precocious but alluring student from his class.
Based on the 1964 novella by Christopher Isherwood, Tom Ford revealed that his interpretation is somewhat autobiographical, as he can identify with George. Ford has lived with the same man for 23 years and some of the more intimate scenes of the couple cooped up reading together are apparently “like a scene out of his own life”, as told to Mark Kermode on The Culture Show. Like George, Tom Ford has had women in his life trivialise his relationship and fail to accept it as real love and not some kind of substitution.
What’s so striking about the film is how beautifully shot and surprisingly non-commercial it actually is. It has been filmed with a soft focus, with pastel hues becoming bolder in George’s moments of short-lived joy. It’s almost like seeing 60s America through the hazy lense of a Diana camera.
Ford has scrutinised every last detail and every piece of furniture down to George’s daily box-fresh white shirts, grooming products and stationery, which perfectly match up to his stylish, ‘modern’ and clinical character. The girls are a cross between Brigitte Bardot and Grease’s Pink Ladies, just like they’ve stepped out of the pages of Lula. Ford left the sartorial decisions in the capable hands of stylist/costume designer Arianne Phillips and the clothes certainly won’t Tom Ford fanatics.
Tom Ford has described the film as the first expressive thing he has ever done and that the film is like a reaction to fashion’s fast pace and commercialism. Ford’s keen eye for composition, through twenty years of aiming to communicate just the right image, has inevitably made the film stylised to an almost clinical degree. It’s an overload of perfection, which is enthralling but oddly almost too hard to handle.
It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Colin Firth to play repressed, uncomfortable George and Nicholas Hoult is completely seductive as a seemingly wholesome West Coast student. It was kind of strange to see these two pasty Brit actors given the Tom Ford spit and polish, all sculpted and tanned with alarmingly white teeth.
A Single Man is a pretty flawless film and despite the tense subject matter, there are some hilarious moment and dry quips from Colin Firth. The film is beautiful, intelligent, considered and captivating – much like the man himself!
A Single Man is out today at selected cinemas.