Tom Ford's A Single Man features one of the year's most moving performances - by Colin Firth - set against what appears to be one long perfume or underwear commercial from the early 1990s.
Never mind that the film is set in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 - fashion guru Ford's visual style consists of the kind of grainy, loving close-ups that the old Calvin Klein ads used to feature. Since this is a story about a closeted gay man, most of those close-ups are of male forms: faces, pecs, abs, thighs, buttocks. These images all seem to feature smooth male skin, glistening in the California sun under a coating of oil or sweat or water. Most of those shots are in slow-motion, to maximize the dreamy, homoerotic thrill.
Watching the film, I assume, is meant to offer a look inside the mind of someone consumed with sex, who is unable to express his sexuality in a repressive society. That seems at odds with the character Firth creates and plays with such perfect pitch.
But, given the plot, it is more likely one facet of his perception on this given day, which is meant to be his last on earth. It's the facet, however, upon which Ford seems to fix his camera most regularly.
Firth is George, a college English professor in 1962 Los Angeles. The film, based on a short novel by Christopher Isherwood, chronicles that one day in his life: the day he plans to kill himself. Continued..
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