A Single Man (Tom Ford, 2009)

Based on Christopher Isherwood's novel, fashion designer Tom Ford's debut film tells the story of George Falconer, an English professor in '60s California who starts a day under the multiple shrouds of the loss of his long-term partner, impending Armageddon in the Cuban missile crisis and a crushing realisation of his inescapable decline into lonely old age, surrounded by an increasingly inane world.
There are a lot of directions to go from here. Ford opts for the elegiac route, with flashbacks to happier times in his life, prompted by a heightened feeling of poignancy in Falconer's everyday encounters.
The end result is stunning. It's hard to believe that we're dealing with a director fresh from the fickle world of fashion, albeit that as a gay man a natural affinity with the theme of the repressed outcast may be present, and clearly the original script has resonance beyond the world of a middle-aged homosexual too. But that still leaves work to be done with the adaptation. It's sensuously shot, finely nuanced, and Colin Firth, who many might have seen in the past as the archetype of the stiff upper-lipped inexpressive upper-class Englishman, puts in a remarkable performance. You could actually watch extremes of barely withheld emotion playing across his face for hours. I never though I'd say that.

8/10