The ghost of Alfred Hitchcock hangs heavy over Tom Ford's sensational debut feature A Single Man.Like the late director's chilly masterpiece Vertigo, it's a visually stunning film in which the viewer is aware at every moment that s/he is watching a movie unfold as willed by the director. Ford—who directed, co-wrote, produced and personally financed A Single Man after walking away from his contract as clothing designer for Gucci—might want to stop at the one picture, leaving an unsullied reputation intact. That's how perfectly composed and assured a movie it is.
The film, based on the 1964 novel by author and gay icon Christopher Isherwood, takes place on a single day and night in November 1962. George Falconer ( Colin Firth, outshining even his usual excellent work ) , a college English professor, is still in the throes of bereavement eight months after the death of Jim ( played by Matthew Goode, who makes wonderful use of his brief screen time ) , his partner of 14 years who was killed in a car accident while visiting family in Colorado. At the outset we learn that George has decided to kill himself.
But even as George makes his elaborate preparations his plans go awry thanks to an assortment of interruptions. There's his bewitching fellow London expat, Charley ( Julianne Moore, playing with typical finesse ) , who won't stop phoning up to remind him about dinner that night; the neighborhood child who seems to have preternatural insight into his situation; and a hunky hustler named Carlos ( Jon Kortajarena ) he meets outside a liquor store. Finally, there's the breathtakingly beautiful Kenny ( Nicholas Hoult, who makes for one hell of a fetching protégé ) , with his tight white jeans and angora sweater ( a subconscious nod to Ed Wood's transvestite classic Glen Or Glenda? ) who keeps challenging him with provocative comments and barely concealed lust.
So George, who is photographed in color- leached tones of gray, black, brown and white, keeps getting sidetracked from his mission and his aching memories of life with Jim. As a contrast, Ford has his cinematographer Eduard Grau shoot the flashbacks and the characters that connect with George's conscious in saturated color—an effective, artificial device that emphasizes George's emotional isolation. This will irritate some with its redundancy as will Ford's decision to use the camera to eroticize everything that George sees—clocks, cars, hairdos, furniture, shirtless college boys, and of course the luxurious clothes—but I dug both. And the sets are a dream of early 60s luxe taste ( designed by Amy Welles ) . It's as if an aesthete had directed an episode of "Mad Men" without concern for the budget.
Upon first viewing the stunning cinematography, gorgeous music score ( the year's best by Abel Korzeniowski ) , exquisite production design ( by Dan Bishop ) and Ford's precision and his innate gay sensibility ( George's memories of Jim and his encounters with Kenny are like a prolonged, achingly erotic wet dream ) might obscure the enormously complex performances of Firth and Moore so I recommend a second and perhaps a third viewing of A Single Man—once to revel in the carefully crafted artifice, the second time to fully appreciate the complex performances and the third to luxuriate in Ford's singular achievement. A Single Man is not just the best queer-themed movie of the year—it's one of the best. Period.
It's the week of the queer director movies. From Tom Ford we move to Rob Marshall, the Oscar winner ( for Chicago ) who had a misstep with Memoirs of a Geisha and now has another with Nine, the big-screen version of the Broadway musical, in turn based on Fellini's 8½.
The material focuses on the fictional Italian movie director Guido Contini ( played by Daniel Day-Lewis ) , who is having a career crisis. It's 1965 and la dolce vita is in full swing but Contini is having none of it. He is surrounded by the insistent, ever-present women in his life—his acerbic costume designer ( Judi Dench in a clipped pageboy ) , wife Luisa ( a wonderfully emotive Marion Cotillard ) , his chatterbox of a mistress ( the sensational beauty Penelope Cruz ) , a persistent journalist ( Kate Hudson doing a fun imitation of her mother Goldie circa her Laugh-In days ) , a touchy movie star ( Nicole Kidman, who registers well in her one number ) and the memories of women past—his late mother ( the legendary Sophia Loren, who apparently does not age ) and Saraghina the whore on the beach, his first sexual encounter ( Fergie, belting out the signature "Be Italian" ) .
Onstage, Maury Yeston's sophisticated though mostly unhummable score matched the acrid ennui of Fellini's original story, aided by the immediacy of live theatre ( and in the revival, the electrifying performance of Antonio Banderas in the leading part ) . But onscreen, stripped of Fellini's genius, the material is shockingly thin and repetitious. The songs the ladies sing are entertaining enough ( though it's only Cotillard who makes an emotional connection with the audience ) but no amount of creativity on Marshall's part and his technicians could have overcome the absolute miscasting of Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.
Day-Lewis speaks and sings ( in a light tenor ) in a perfectly sculpted Italian accent but doesn't look Italian or register as an effortless chick magnet—essential requirements for the role. He just looks wrong.
"I would see Rome the way you interpret it in your movies," Loren tells Day-Lewis at one point. If Marshall had gone against the money men and insisted on Banderas or if he'd waited for Javier Bardem to return to the role that might have been the case, and Nine might be getting a "10" from this reviewer—instead of a "6."
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