Well, we have an early contender – certainly for Best Actor (Colin Firth) and Best Supporting Actress (Julianne Moore – who was robbed in the Best Actress category for Far From Heaven in 2002) – but arguably also for Film and Director.A Single Man is one of the most assured debuts I can recall.
A beautiful film in every sense there are a few moments early on when the fact it is a film by fashion designer Tom Ford leave your mind getting in the way. One or two moments elicit an expectancy for a product logo to appear, but these are quickly thrown aside as you get drawn into the story.
The screenplay, co-written by Ford, is timed to perfection. The pace is quick yet allows for easy entry. Nothing about the world is covert and hidden yet neither is it in-your-face and confrontational. Each of the three leads, Firth, Moore and About A Boy’s Nicholas Hoult is given a fully rounded character regardless of screen time, because you can feel the unsaid underneath and each gets their own arc, without the story ever feeling like there is too much going on in its fairly short (99mins) running time.
The direction is highly stylised but it never gets in the way, always serving the story. It will be interesting to see if Ford can change the style down a gear when tackling other stories in future but here he has the balance right. It is easy to focus on the style in the early stages because of fore-knowledge but this is a film that just gets better as you watch.
It helps that is served by a faultless cast. It is interesting that Ford has chosen Brits Hoult, Matthew Goode and Lee Pace to play Americans and American Moore to play a Brit but it works and as most people won’t know (except for Moore) the nationalities of the cast the illusion will never be broken – you wouldn’t suspect.
Firth has simply never been so good. If every actor has one perfect, flawless role for them out there then Firth has found his here.
After a few years of noble efforts and oddities Moore reminds us that she really is one of the best American actresses working. This rivals Far From Heaven, while perhaps not quite matching it only because it is very much a supporting role. But if this isn’t the role that finally bags Moore a long overdue Oscar then there’s a phenomenal performance hiding out there somewhere because Moore ought to be a shoe-in.
There best summary is simply that A Single Man is a beautiful film – beautiful in tone; in intention; in acting; in realisation. If Ford can repeat the quality of this debut in future film projects people will be wishing he’d been doing this all along.
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