Firth triumphs in exploration of grief

Several diverse currents come together in "A Single Man" to form a good movie and a great opportunity for actor Colin Firth.

Adapted from Christopher Isherwood's novel of the same name, and directed by fashion designer Tom Ford, the film evinces a slick and studied worship of beautiful surfaces, with spray-tanned male bodies turning up everywhere, as if posing for a cologne advertisement.

Yet the movie cuts deeper, giving Firth the chance to elucidate a character he has been playing, in one form or another, for the last 15 years.

In one way, Firth simply plays George, a gay English professor grieving over the death of his live-in lover of 16 years. The grief is isolating. The year is 1962, which means that being gay is also isolating. And George is a Brit living in Los Angeles, which would be isolating in any case.

He has one friend, a drunken woman (Julianne Moore), who is also English and miserable, but for all intents and purposes, he is utterly alone. The lover has been dead for months; and the grief has not lessened, and so George plans to commit suicide.

From Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice" (1995) through Mr. Whittaker in "Easy Virtue" (2008), Firth has specialized in playing Englishmen who feel more than they show. Perhaps these characters were merely shy, but in "A Single Man," we see the philosophy behind the restraint: a belief in the futility of emotional display (it doesn't help), in the rudeness of it (it's an imposition) and in the inexactitude of it: He could cry forever and not cry hard enough.

In an early scene, the one that will get Firth nominated for numerous acting awards, George is sitting in his armchair reading when he gets a phone call: There has been a car accident, etc. Ford keeps the camera fixed on Firth, as the character experiences devastation followed by humiliation: The family doesn't want him at the memorial service.

Watching Firth, we have no doubt that we are watching a man whose insides are caving in, and yet he conveys this while maintaining a steady, clipped, dignified conversational mode. Then the phone call ends, and he sits looking into the silence, as if watching a wave coming toward him that's about to swallow him whole.

Having handed Firth several guaranteed nominations, Ford then ensures he probably won't win them by presenting George's breakdown as a montage sequence, rather than as a scene, though the choice was probably right for the movie.

Maybe, just maybe, "A Single Man" could have been more depressing, but short of a subplot involving very cute starving orphans, it's difficult to imagine how. What saves the film is its restraint. This is a mature, unsentimental portrait of middle age as an absolute ghost town.

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