A Single Man: movie review

Famous fashion designer Tom Ford has directed his first feature film, “A Single Man,” based on a Christopher Isherwood novel, and, if nothing else, it has a fashionable look – the camera angles, the colorations, the sets, seem just so. The precision of his technique is countered by the story’s emotional chaos. Set in southern California in the early 1960s, “A Single Man” is about George Falconer (Colin Firth), a gay college professor whose lover has been killed in a car wreck and who now feels he has nothing more to live for. It’s a dirgelike odyssey sparked by Julianne Moore’s overheated turn as George’s best friend – a welcome respite from Firth’s clenched emoting. Grade: B-