Tom Ford’s Debut Movie – A Single Man

Caught Fridae’s fundraising gala premier of Tom Ford’s first movie, A Single Man at The Cathay mid this week.  I wasn’t sure what the movie was about or who were acting in it till I watched it and I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome.  Had a few good dosage of Rupicolo Vintage 2005/06 from Castel Del Monte Rupicolo served by Booze Wine Shop at the reception.  After that, I found the pace of the movie to be a little slow for a 930pm screening.  However, the cinematography, treatment and style captivated me.   The plot was somehow a little heartwarming for me. I love the soundtrack and the vintage 220S Mercedes Benz that was featured in the movie.

Listen to “Stillness of the Mind” from the Soundtrack.

My takeaway from the movie is to learn to let go and open yourself up to others. Relationships between people are really beautiful.   We just need to find the time to appreciate people and beauty in them.   Life is really short afterall.

So what is this movie about?

(Source: Times Online)

Colin Firth is George Falconer, an English professor marooned in his Savile Row suits in the incongruous surroundings of California in 1962. George’s longtime lover has just died, and he suffers a grief that dare not speak its name, in a time when gay men were “light in their loafers”. The predicament plays across Firth’s face in the minutest of subtexts in a performance that is deserving of his Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

A Single Man is adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s cult novel and directed by the former Gucci designer Tom Ford, who curates each scene as though it were a fashion shoot from the era. The film is visually stunning, using the production design team from Mad Men. Ford brings intelligence and style to his first full-length film, and Firth brings substance.

Firth finds himself playing the usual male romantic lead but in new circumstances. Supposedly in his early fifties, George looks like the young Yves Saint Laurent in his horn-rimmed glasses, and brings a magnificent ironic detachment to his role. Yet the pain is barely held below the surface, when he hears in a phone call that Jim, his lover of 16 years, has been killed in a car crash. He politely thanks the caller who says of the funeral: “The service is just for family”. Excluded and unable to mourn, George falls twisted with agony into the arms of his best girlfriend Charley, played by Julianne Moore.

The film mostly takes place on one day eight months after Jim’s death, when George is feeling particularly suicidal, but there are flashbacks to their first meeting — Jim is doing his National Service as a sailor, inevitably — and to ordinary days in their relationship. Rather like that much-loved camp classic The Wizard of Oz, in which the Kansas scenes are sepia and Oz is in Technicolor, George’s life in mourning is often shot in washed-out beige, while the flashbacks of Jim are gloriously bright.

There is an affecting domestic scene in which the men flop reading at opposite ends of a sofa, an all-but-married couple with their feet intertwined, two black and white fox terriers lolling beside them. George is reading Kafka, Jim Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which also became a movie where exquisite good taste masks the underlying hurt.

George’s mid-century modern glass-and-wood house is as much the star as Firth, equally deserving of long, luscious shots. There are other items to covet: the black convertible Mercedes, the cufflinks, the lamps, the tie pins, the semi-circular white sofa, the G&Ts, and the pink Sobranie cigarettes. As Ruskin said, quoted in the Isherwood book: “Taste is the only morality”.

Moore is a living work of Sixties’ art, with helmeted hair and kohl eyes, as George’s alcoholic friend, also from Blighty. She does a spot-on upper-class druggy Kings Road accent. There is a heavenly dinner scene in which George, with a touch of an embarrassing dad at a wedding, dances with Charley to Booker T. and the M.G.’s Green Onions.

By day George is at work teaching Aldous Huxley to ungrateful students at university, while the Cuban missile crisis thrums almost unnoticed in the background. George gives an off-the-cuff lecture about the unsaid, “the majority that fear the minority, particularly if the minority is invisible”, and catches the interest of Kenny, a 20-year-old student played by Nicholas Hoult (from Skins and About a Boy). Kenny starts to worry as George clears his desk and heads off with a gun in his briefcase.

“This is kind of a serious day for me,” George says, and nothing will raise him from his depression.

The addition of the gun to the film — making George’s internal monologue in the book visible — results in an unexpectedly funny scene as George considers suicide in bed, but seems more worried about making a mess of his luxurious linen sheets than about ending it all.

Ford confessed that he “had a crush” on his whole cast, so there is no shortage of homoerotica: baby-oiled six packs and pink-lipped, blue-eyed boys who have an aura of My Little Pony about them. Whatever your tastes, the film is a constant aesthetic pleasure, like being in a boutique hotel, reading a deliciously sad novel.

Colin Firth’s concern about the movie

Colin Firth was wary of kissing Nicholas Hoult in “A Single Man” because the actor is the same age as his son. The 49-year-old plays a college professor in Tom Ford’s directional debut, and Hoult’s character, a teenage student, develops an infatuation with his teacher.

But Firth worried about one scene where the pair had to kiss because his son Will, 20, was born just months after Hoult. He says, “I did have conversations with Tom about the nature of the relationship. I have a son the same age as Nick so I was very concerned.”

“I would have been uneasy had he (Hoult) been uneasy but he seemed so calm about everything and displayed no self-consciousness whatsoever. But the nature of the scene wasn’t predatory on my part. If anything the young man is the stalker.”

14 December 2009 11:46 AM, PST | Zap2It – The Dish Rag | See recent Zap2It – The Dish Rag news »

Matthew Goode, who is sweetly hot in “A Single Man” with Colin Firth and looks scruffy sexy in his new film, “Leap Year,” with Amy Adams, talked to The Advocate about his “Man” sex scenes.

Even though Goode is straight in real-life, the married new dad tells the magazine that it wasn’t very hard at all to make out with Colin. Yes, we can well imagine.

“Obviously, I’m a man who likes women and has a child now, but I’m not squeamish and I love all people. If you’ve been entrusted to do the job, then you find something to love in the other character and you do your job.

Who is the better kisser, Colin or Amy Adams, his “Year” costar? He’s not comparing lip locks.

But he did acknowledge Colin’s praise for his own kissing skills.

“Right back at ‘im,” he said, adding, “Sometimes you see straight actors »

– editorial@zap2it.com

Check out the article Tom Ford did win at the Oscars… in a manner of speaking by Darren Ho from Augustman.com.

Facts about the Movie:

DIRECTOR:

Tom Ford

CAST:

SOUNDTRACK:

Performer : Various Artists
Label : Relativity Media
Release Date : January 05, 2010
Composer : Abel Korzeniowski, Shigeru Umebayashi

Track Listing

1. Stillness of the Mind – Abel Korzeniowski
2. Drowning – Abel Korzeniowski
3. Snow – Abel Korzeniowski
4. Becoming George – Abel Korzeniowski
5. George’s Waltz (1) – Shigeru Umebayashi
6. Daydreams – Abel Korzeniowski
7. Mescaline – Abel Korzeniowski
8. Going Somewhere – Abel Korzeniowski
9. A Variation on Scotty Tails Madeline – Shigeru Umebayashi
10. Carlos – Shigeru Umebayashi
11. La Wally – Miriam Gauci
12. Stormy Weather – Etta James
13. Green Onions – Booker T. & The MG’s
14. Blue Moon – Jo Stafford
15. Swimming – Abel Korzeniowski
16. And Just Like That – Abel Korzeniowski
17. George’s Waltz (2) – Shigeru Umebayashi
18. Sunset – Abel Korzeniowski
19. Clock Tick – Abel Korzeniowski

 

Carlos Clip

Beach Clip

Stars of A Single Man, Nicholas Hoult and Matthew Goode reveal why they were in good company during the filming of Tom Ford’s stylish debut.

Official Website