When the book appeared in 1964 the novelist and critic Stanley Kauffmann noted in his perceptive review striking resemblances between A Single Man and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, and he even suggested it might well have been called "Death in Venice, Cal". Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. The old friend is Charley (the excellent Julianne Moore), an English divorcee considering returning to London, with whom he has an extended, boozy dinner. Born in 1904, Isherwood grew up with the cinema, was fascinated by the relationship between literature and the new medium, and his most famous line occurs his most celebrated book, Goodbye to Berlin: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." Her hair is piled up and cemented in place, her makeup perfect, their dinner elegant. Now, in California, he had only his lover, and his lover is dead. And while “A Single Man” has its flaws, many of these fade in view of the performance and the power of Isherwood’s story. Firth wisely doesn't try to signal this, because any attempt to do so would break the facade and reduce his rather awesome performance to acting-out. It is horrible that this may be the most meaningful relationship right now in either of their lives. And he is a man. Several generations of British homosexuals, from the film director James Whale in the 1930s through Isherwood in the 40s, to the screenwriter Gavin Lambert and the painter David Hockney (both close friends of Isherwood) in the 50s and 60s, found a liberating freedom there. But Mr. Ford, one of the most famous names in fashion and in luxury branding he was the longtime creative director of Gucci has taken an enormous chance just by taking on “A Single Man,” a foundational text in modern gay literature. What makes the day special, and the book too, is George’s existential condition. Many designers are known for their own faultless appearances. A disintegration. He teaches a college class on Aldous Huxley (is he still taught?). A Love That Speaks Its Name: A College Professor’s Fateful Day. The composer Shigeru Umebayashi has written music for several of Mr. Wong’s films and contributed to this one. At one point, he buys some bullets. Of the films based on these novels, Ford's is, I think, the best, though Isherwood's often savage social criticism – of university life, the straight world and cultural homogenisation – has been considerably softened up. Certainly, the director knows how to exploit his actor’s reserve to terrific effect, as when he sets the camera in front of Mr. Firth’s face in one critical scene and just lets the machine record the tremors of emotion cracking the facade. Bringing Hitchcock and Mr. Almodóvar into the picture is risky because it creates a ridiculously lofty level of expectation. It’s hard to know if Mr. Ford’s most flamboyant visual flourish, the use of a changeable palette to show shifts in George’s mood the character’s normally gray face floods with color in the presence of another life force, like Kenny was born out of a filmmaking conceit or a lack of confidence. (It also intimates that the director and the audience belong to the same cine club, which can seem like a form of pandering.) Both penetrate George's carapace, bringing out a frankness and vulnerability he's tried to conceal. There is little movement in the face initially: it’s a beautiful and gently furrowed mask, not yet old, despite the small brushstrokes of white at the temples.
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