Based on Christopher Isherwood's novel, A Single Man (not to be confused with A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers movie we showed in January) is set in Los Angeles in 1962, a time when homosexuality was still "the love that dare not speak its name" and the phrase "a single man" was a euphemism. George (Colin Firth) is a British college professor. It has been eight months since the death of his longtime companion, and he still grieves. His only friendship is with the alcoholic Charley (Julianne Moore), with whom he once, briefly, tried to have a heated affair, and who gives him gin and sympathy and the unconvincing suggestion that they could still make a go of it.
A revolver in a drawer suggests that the day that George mechanically goes through could very well be his last...
"Just about every sequence and flourish and detail in Ford's film feels and looks right. It is primarily Firth's triumph. But it is not a solitary one." --Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune (Rated R for some disturbing images and nudity/sexual content.)
