A Single Man (M). Running time: 100 minutes. Director: Tom Ford. Starring: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode, Nicholas Hoult
It's the moment that made a generation of women swoon. British actor Colin Firth strips off the outer layers of his immaculate period costume and dives into a provincial English pond. This is a cathartic moment for Mr Darcy, the moody hero of the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice. He emerges from the pond symbolically cleansed and physically saturated.
The combination of the emotional and the tactile in this image — of the brooding, masculine Darcy newly reacquainted with his softer side, while cool droplets cling to his curly hair and sideburns, and his white shirt equally clings to his torso — still seems to make many women (and no doubt some men) dip their eyes demurely at every recollection.
Fashion designer turned auteur Tom Ford, by casting Firth as the lead character in A Single Man, channels this enduring sex appeal to intriguing effect. In Ford's film, an older Firth is cloaked in the foppish attire of a university English professor, complete with thick, black-rimmed glasses. Yet it's not enough to conceal the sex symbol within.
This is important, as sex isn't the first thing that comes to mind when considering the film's plot. Firth plays George, a middle-aged gay man who is steeped in the depths of an eight-month pit of depression, since the accidental death of his (much younger) partner of 16 years, Jim (Goode). George is very English, but lives in LA in the early 1960s. We meet him on an important day: he has decided it will be his last.
We follow George as he spends the day making his arrangements. He lays out personal papers, funeral instructions and farewell letters in a tidy grid upon the desk in his home office. He schedules a final binge with long-time friend, drinking partner and former lover, Charley (Moore). He teaches what he believes will be his last class, a tutorial on
Aldous Huxley that digresses into a monologue on fear.
There are hints that despite his intentions, George isn't entirely lost to life. In a sequence that exemplifies the balance of humour and pathos that is managed throughout the film, the ever impeccable George rehearses the suicide, showing great concern for his personal comfort during what will be his final moments, and for preserving the cleanliness of his environs —