Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Review - A Single Man


A Boring Man


A Single Man

Score: 8,0


If I’m completely honest I have to admit that I expected a lot more from this picture. It’s fashion designer Tom Ford’s first featured film. He produced, wrote (adapted) and directed it. Knowing his work, specially his famous and controversial ads (just google him to check them out), it was expected it to be very daring, but I didn’t think he was just going to leave it at that. The story is and adaptation of a homonymous book, from the 60’s I believe, the same period of time that the movie takes place.

I the story, a college professor, portrayed by Colin Firth, receives the call that his partner, Matthew Goode, died in a car accident. And he gets devastated. And that’s all. Some more people come up (otherwise it would be a monologue), people who cohabit with him (meanwhile we also see several flashbacks of Matthew), like Julianne Moore, Colin’s best friend, who has received great reviews from the critics, and is considered for awards. She has nothing to do there. There is just one important scene she’s in, but it’s not like Viola Davis’ scene in Doubt, for example, something surprising and moving.

Besides the three I mentioned before, there’s also Nicholas Hoult, from About A Boy, and was the villain from the British teenage TV series Skins, that I couldn’t miss a single episode, until they changed the whole cast for the new season and I quit watching it. He plays one of Colin’s students, who totally throws himself over him. And during his scenes they increased the saturation of the image, in order to color up Colin’s life.

Nicholas always reminded me of James Marsden, but he’s so dressed up, dolled up, preppy, tanned and with lighter hair, that I couldn’t help reminding of Zac Efron. With better acting skills, of course. Maybe it was a citation to someone and I didn’t recognize. There are two very obvious citations though, like the American Brigite Bardot smoking in the classroom, or the Spanish James Dean, a hustler seducing Colin in the phone booth of the supermarket parking lot. Kinda cliché. And there’s also Ginnifer Goodwin, who was in “Walk The Line” and “He’s Not That Into You”, but she just waves to the neighbors in her two or three scenes.

A picture by a fashion designer could never look bad. If it doesn’t have much to tell, there are plenty of quiet and plastically beautiful takes though. This part specifically is wonderful. It deserves an Oscar of cinematography or set design. But it’s a very gay perspective. We can notice that through the excessive attention to costumes and in scenes like the one Colin can’t stop looking at two shirtless guys playing tennis. The score is very good too. Everything is perfect, calculated. The clothing, sets, and everything else. It’s all so perfect, and then it’s almost kitsch. It seems like a taped version of a Vogue magazine. A two-hour French perfume ad.

The good side is that the quiet scenes explore the facial expressions of the cast. They’re all great though, in all these scenes and in everything else they have to do. Colin was nominated to a Golden Globe, and is also one of the favorites to the Oscars, but I think it’s very unlikely they award two gay characters in a row. One funny thing is that, except for Colin, they switched the nationalities of all the (speaking) cast. Julianne, who’s American, plays a British woman, and Matthew and Nicholas play American guys, even though they’re British.

And in the end the single man is just a boring man. Very apathetic. His behavior is not understandable. Ok, maybe it is, but there’s no way to agree with it. It’s alright to suffer for his loss, but he can’t stop living. Life goes on. And he’s very weird too. What kind of person watches the neighbors through the window while seated in toilet bowl? It’s a very surreal world. There’s only gorgeous skinny people, except for Colin, who’s far from being fat, though, and the story makes everything look very easy, as if opportunities knock on people’s doors everyday. It doesn’t express reality. Ok, I’ll stop “talking” now before I give more spoilers...



UPDATE: One detail I forgot to mention. The worst part of the movie is the excessive valorization (maybe an imposition) of youth, thinness and richness as beauty standards. Colin and Matthew had a relationship for 16 years and they don’t grow old at all. This is also the worst side of the fashion world, which is a very clear and strong influence in this film.

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