A Single Man

A Single Man is siffused with two kinds of nostalgia: longing for a lost loved one, and an acute pining for the 1960s.

The film is an adaptation Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel about a Los Angeles English professor, George Falconer, dealing with the car-crash death of his partner of 16 years - but fashion designer Ford, making his directorial debut, could have equally taken his cues from 1960s-set TV drama Mad Men.

Shooting in a soft, grainy glow that resembles Kodachrome, Ford lingers lovingly on black-rimmed spectacles, beehive hairdos, Cadillacs, lamps and modernist buildings. It's a production designer's dream, coated in the era's most melancholy shades of brown, and art directors Dan Bishop and Ariane Phillips pull out all the stops.

Luckily, Ford's delight in Kennedy-era design dovetails nicely with his lead character's mindset. George (Colin Firth) wakes up on Friday, 30 November, 1962, with the intention of ending his life. As he moves from his job, to the bank and to the house of his best friend, Charley (the excellent Julianne Moore), he looks upon objects and faces with the knowledge he will never see them again. (Even the smell of a passing dog enchants him, "like buttered toast".) George's wistful mood is too heavy to be penetrated by the sexual eagerness of either a handsome student, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), or a handsomer Spanish rent boy (Jon Kortajarena) he encounters in a parking lot.

Colin Firth has been nominated for an Oscar for this role and it's easy to see why. In flashback we see George being informed of Jim's (Matthew Goode) death by phone. He holds his stiff upper lip while being told he can't come to the funeral as it's for family only, then see him paralysed in his chair with shock, tears welling up. Ford favours close-ups for his performers as well as his props, and Firth's devastation is awful to behold.

The film's politics are understated but pointed. George learns from a neighbour's young daughter that her father disapproves of him for being "light in his loafers". He also snaps at his one-time lover Charley's suggestion that his 16-year relationship with Jim was just a passing phase. "If you weren't such a goddam poof we would all have been happy," is the gin-soaked divorcée's half-serious rejoinder. George and Charley are both expatriate Londoners, both lonely, and both trapped, but their friendship is a beautiful thing.

Lush music by Abel Korzeniowski and Shigeru Umebayashi (In the Mood for Love) completes A Single Man's mood of trembling poignancy. One might expect a fashion icon's debut film would be flashy and superficial, but Ford's movie is a layered work of quality tailoring. Nick Dent