Review | Tom Ford’s ‘A Single Man’
Life’s Lost Loves and Second Chances

As someone who prides himself on having a love of both fashion and film, no story has intrigued me more than that of Tom Ford’s desire to make a feature film. Many know Ford as one of the greatest living American fashion designers, yet he made it no secret after his retirement from designing that he had his sights set on film directing. Could he translate his meticulous eye and his artistic genius from the fashion world to the silver screen? Or would his penchant for overt sex, evidenced by his racy ad campaigns for Gucci in the late 90s and early 00s, render any film work he’d aspire to make much too campy right out of the gate?  For years, the question lingered. Luckily for us, we finally have an answer.

“A Single Man,” based on the Christopher Isherwood novel, follows a day in the life of George Falconer, a British English Lit Professor in Los Angeles around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. After losing his partner of nine years in a car accident a few months earlier, George lives his life day by day with a numbness that Isherwood describes in vivid detail in his first person narrative. The novel itself is almost Kerouac-ian in its stream-of-consciousness prose style, and in reading it you can feel the importance of a novel that does not for one second take for granted the complexity of emotions felt when the love of one’s life, gay or straight, is ripped away without cause or warning. George’s feelings aren’t just the product of a “phase.” The love he’s lost is real and the pain unbearable. In a world where gays and lesbians are still to this day marginalized, placed at the forefront of a culture war that would have our feelings reduced to something abnormal, something to be cured or legislated against, Isherwood’s tale is a powerful statement on how our love is equal, and thus equally as painful when lost.

It is clear from watching the film adaptation of “A Single Man” that none of this is lost on Tom Ford. The day we see play out on-screen—Falconer’s last, as he prepares to commit suicide at the end of it—is, at times, nearly as beautifully shot as it is described to us in print. When faced with the advances of one of his young students, both the Falconer portrayed in the novel and in the film are equally as unprepared to face the onslaught of emotions brought out by what would be his first romantic connection since his lover’s passing. These and many other complex layers brought out over the course of both Isherwood’s 150 or so pages and Mr. Ford’s nearly two hours of filmmaking share a vision of a story of loss and love and the beginning of a life anew.

Unfortunately, the film isn’t nearly without it’s flaws. Though admirable as Tom Ford’s desire to make this movie were, it is clear from the get-go that he still has a lot to learn about directing a feature film. At times the film itself can feel a bit gimmicky, with editing techniques that not only break the audience away from the story unfolding by revealing the apparatus at hand—long shots with no diagetic sound, a clear use of color correction as a means of signifying passion—and a clear preference for fetishizing men in a way that at times just feels like yet another Tom Ford cologne ad. Though a few reviews out by other gay publications have already lauded the film as nearly perfect—and no doubt gays on either coast will start to call this their favorite movie of the year for obvious reasons (lots of male nudity will help that cause)—a lot of the strengths of this film including the one’s I mentioned earlier myself can mostly be credited to some of the strongest acting to date this year. Colin Firth’s performance as George Falconer is honest and sincere. For a man known best as Mr. Darcy from the BBC mini-series “Pride and Prejudice” and that character’s more famous modern counterpart Mark Darcy from the “Bridget Jones” series, Firth brings to his performance as Falconer a sincerity and nuance not often seen in a gay character on screen. He is, at times, both painful to watch and magnificent in his subtlety, especially in flashbacks to his life with his partner (played by Matthew Goode). Julianne Moore, who plays his neighbor and fag hag Charley, is also seen doing what she does best, playing an emotionally off the charts woman in period garb. Though she isn’t on screen for long, she does play an integral role in understanding the complexity behind George’s desire to want to end his life, particularly when she wonders aloud why he couldn’t have made a life with her instead.

It would be harsh to say, however, that Tom Ford doesn’t have promise as a filmmaker in his own right. He does. His source material is not easily translated to the screen, and as a result this film begins to feel more “Virgin Suicides” than “Brokeback Mountain”. With her first film, Sofia Coppola also had a knack for bringing out a strong performances from her actors, an eye for color and scenery, and managed to create a film that conveyed the fraught emotional climate that resonated throughout Jeffrey Eugenides novel. Yet, she struggled with adapting a book that was so heavily introspective and that relied on a lot of literary description and translating all that to the screen. She ultimately learned how to make a better film—”Lost in Translation,” we salute you—and it’s clear with “A Single Man” that Tom Ford will, in time, do the same. In an industry where most gay characters are still either someone’s sidekick—that is, of course, if they aren’t headlining a straight-to-cable camp-fest on LOGO—”A Single Man” remains set apart. In a recent New York Times piece the director himself was quoted as wondering to himself before production on “A Single Man” began, “Who needs a ‘Tom Ford’ movie?” If “A Single Man” is any indication, Mr. Ford, I think we do.

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