I
have not been this disappointed in a movie in a very long time but I
should have known better. Looking at the newspaper and TV ads, not to
mention the coming attractions, you would never know that "A Single
Man" by Christopher Isherwood, was one of the first successful books
published in the 1960s that dealt with modern gay life. For anyone not
familiar with the book you wouldn't know that the title referred to a
man who had lost his lover of sixteen years and was following the last
day of his life before he committed suicide.

Looking
at the ads for the movie you would think it was some sort of love story
or romantic comedy involving Julianne Moore and Colin Firth. Nowhere
are you made aware of his lover, or a hustler cruising him and a flirty
male student who might turn into the same type of man that George
(Colin Firth) is, including having a girl friend like Charley (Moore)
who wanted more from him.

The hustler, played by Jon Kortajarena, and the student, played by Nicholas Hoult,
(and he bugged me during the whole movie because he looks like a female
actress and I couldn't identify who) are ex models and Matthew Goode play the dead lover who we see in flashbacks. Jon and Nicholas modeled
for Tom Ford, the fashion designer, who directs this, his first movie,
as well as debuts as a co-writer and producer.

Movie
scores can greatly add to a movie--think of Jaws, Psycho, Gone with the
Wind--Casablanca--but The Single Man has one of the most
annoying,irritating film score I have ever heard.

Ford makes a lot of first director's mistakes, especially having too many 'artistic' shots and fooling with color, black and white, using them in the wrong way.

Colin
Firth, in a very quiet role, brings a lot to the character of George
and when he smiles you can feel the joy of the character. Julianna
Moore goes  a little overboard in her extended scene and doesn't look
comfortable in the dancing bit. The other actors mentioned above do a
good job but I wanted to slap Kenny (Hoult)
the tenth time he called Firth, "Sir" which he would have stopped early
on. While a teacher, an older man, understands a younger man calling
him sir, unless they were in an s & m or b & d relationship the
older man would put a stop to it by the fifth time, especially if a
relationship was developing.

A
Single Man is a quiet, introspective, short book that comes across as a
slow moving film that would collapse without Colin Firth's performance
but I don't think that is enough to make this film a hit with the
crossover crowd let alone the gay crowd even with the nude scenes.

Ford's
attention to detail is meticulous, sometimes too impeccable, and I
would love to own the house that George and Jim live(d) in. The movie
was playing on two screens at the theatre  we saw it and at the showing
we attended there were maybe 15 people in the audience while next door
the showing of "Nine" had an almost full auditorium.