Retro IONCINEMA.com
1st Look: Stills for Tom Ford’s A Single Man
We’ll wait before official critical word from the Lido to push this title up as a high priority film to cover at TIFF, but Ford’s A Single Man is among a dozen films competing in Venice and with Julianne Moore who looks great any decade setting (she was sublime in Savage Grace) on board and Colin Firth, who I never give enough credit to, but appreciated his loving patriarch bit in Genova, in the driver’s seat, I think we might be in for a surprise.
We aren’t yet close enough to the moment where Toronto’s Bloor street, or more specifically, a three-block radius of upper scale designer name shopping portion of it, pulls out the red carpet to receive Tom Ford, and yet, I’m beginning to think that my original assessment on the probabilities of this being only slightly better than what he could pull off during a Vogue fashion shoot were off. I didn’t think much about the idea of a fashion designer making his feature length filming debut – sure he’d bring his A game to costume design department and perhaps have a clear idea about the interior shots, but what else could he theoretically do? I once had that apprehensive feeling about a painter/artist turned filmmaker named Schnabel.
We’ll wait before official critical word from the Lido to push this title up as a high priority film to cover at TIFF, but Ford’s A Single Man is among a dozen films competing in Venice and with Julianne Moore who looks great any decade setting (she was sublime in Savage Grace) on board and Colin Firth, who I never give enough credit to, but appreciated his loving patriarch bit in Genova, in the driver’s seat, I think we might be in for a surprise. Photographed by cinematographer Eduard Grau (Albert Serra’s Honor de Cavelleria), here’s the official synopsis and first stills from the film below:
Written by Ford and David Scearce and adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, set in Los Angeles in 1962, at the height of the missile crisis following US invasion of Cuba, A Single Man is the story of George Falconer (Firth), a 52-year old British college professor who is struggling to find meaning to his life after the death of his long time partner, Jim (Goode). George dwells on the past and cannot see his future as we follow him through a single day, where a series of events and encounters, ultimately leads him to decide if there is a meaning to life after Jim. George is consoled by his closest friend Charley (Moore) a 48-year old beauty who is wrestling with her own questions about the future. A young student of George’s, Kenny, (Nicholas Hoult) who is coming to terms with his true nature, stalks his professor as he feels in him a kindred spirit.
