An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Nick Curtis's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Tom Ford.
Cast: Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode, Colin Firth
Restrained performance: Colin Firth (George) with Julianne Moore (Charlotte) in A Single Man
Tom Ford’s first film is an accomplished period piece, a melancholy study of a bereaved gay Englishman in a society — 1960s Los Angeles — that cannot acknowledge his grief.
As befits the work of a fashion designer, it is immaculately put together and looks gorgeous.
But with Colin Firth giving an impeccably restrained performance in the lead role, A Single Man also has a coolness that borders on the chilly.
Firth is “slightly stiff but perfect George”, a middle-aged English professor whose lover of 16 years (Matthew Goode) has died in a car crash.
The funeral, a phone call distastefully informs George, “is just for family”.
So we watch him trying to go through his normal day, his teacherly formality cracking under the weight of a silent pain that renders the looming Cuban Missile Crisis irrelevant.
He delivers a snappish lecture to his students on fear of minorities, deflects offers of physical and emotional consolation, ominously loads a revolver.
Ford, who adapted the screenplay from a Christopher Isherwood short story, directs with admirable economy and frames each shot beautifully, but there’s a detachment to his camera.
The world it sees is formal and flawless, from George’s sharp suits, modernist glass house and glossy Mercedes, right down to the font on his headed notepaper.
The neighbours who think he’s “light in [his] loafers” are a picture-perfect nuclear unit.
Even the rogue element, Julianne Moore’s soused and self-pitying divorcee, Charlotte, is decked out in couture and a bespoke English accent.
There’s also a lot of idealised male beauty around.
Firth’s performance is strong enough not to be swamped by the production design.
The flashback of him clinging, bawling, to Charlotte, accompanied only by mournful strings on the soundtrack, is terribly moving.
But Ford himself seems at times frustrated not to be able to penetrate the surface of this world, where gay men must dissemble and feign.
Often, his lens focuses on an eye, as if it were truly the window of the soul.
But on screen it’s just a big, blue, beautiful eye.
Premieres tonight at 6pm and 6.15pm at Vue West End; further screenings Sat 17 and Mon 19 Oct at BFI Southbank (020 7928 3232, www.bfi.org.uk/lff).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Morning:
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