Venice Film Festival

Won - Best Actor

Colin Firth

Won - Queer Lion

A Single Man

Nominated - Golden Lion

Tom Ford

Santa Barbara International Film Festival

Won - Performance of the Year

Colin Firth

Won - Montecito Award

Julianne Moore

Austin Film Critic's Awards

Won - Best Actor

Colin Firth

San Diego Film Critic's Awards

Won - Best Actor

Colin Firth

San Francisco Film Critic's Awards

Won - Best Actor

Colin Firth

Toronto Film Critic's Awards

Nominated - Best Actor

Colin Firth

Los Angeles Film Critic's Awards

Nominated - Best Actor

Colin Firth

Chicago Film Critic's Awards

Nominated - Best Supporting Actress

Julianne Moore

Golden Globe Awards (Hollywood Foreign Press)

Nominated - Best Actor, Drama

Colin Firth

Nominated - Best Supporting Actress

Julianne Moore

Nominated - Best Original Score

Abel Korzeniowksi

Satellite Awards (International Press)

Nominated - Best Actor, Drama

Colin Firth

Nominated - Art Direction & Production Design

Ian Phillips, Dan Bishop

Critic's Choice Film  Awards

Nominated - Best Actor

Colin Firth

Nominated - Best Supporting Actress

Julianne Moore

Nominated - Best Adapted Screenplay

Tom Ford, David Scearce

Nominated - Best Art Direction

A Single Man

Screen Actors Guild  Awards

Nominated - Best Performance for Leading Role - Male

Colin Firth

Detroit Society of Film Critics

Won - Best Actor

Colin Firth

Film Independent Spirit Awards*

Nominated - Best Actor

Colin Firth

Nominated - Best First Feature

A Single Man

Nominated - Best First Screenplay

Tom Ford, David Scearce

London Film Critics Awards

Won - Best British Actor

Colin Firth

Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards

Won - Best Actor

Colin Firth

GLAAD Media Awards*

Nominated - Outstanding Film - Wide Release

A Single Man
Dorian Awards

Won - Film Performance of the Year

Colin Firth

Won - Film of the Year

A Single Man

BAFTA Awards

Won- Lead Actor

Colin Firth

Nominated - Costume Design

Arianne Phillips - A Single Man

82nd Academy Awards*

Nominated - Best Actor

Colin Firth

International Cinefile Society

Won - Best Actor

Colin Firth

Elle Style Awards

Won - Best Actor

Colin Firth

Won - Breakthrough Talent

Nicholas Hoult

 

*  Awards not yet announced or ceremony has not taken place

BASED ON "A Single Man" by Christopher Isherwood

 

FILMING DATES:

3 November 2008 - 5 December 2008

RELEASE DATES:

Italy... 11 September 2009 (Venice Film Festival)

Canada... 14 September 2009 (Toronto Film Festival)

UK... 16 October 2009 (BFI London Film Festival)

Japan... 19 October 2009 (Tokyo Film Festival)

USA... 19 October 2009 (Chicago Film Festival)

Norway... 29 November 2009 (Oslo International Film Festival)

Poland... 30 November 2009 (Camerimage Film Festival)

Canada... 11 December 2009 (Toronto)

USA... 11 December 2009 (limited)

Israel... 17 December 2009

USA... 25 December 2009 (wide)

Italy... 15 January 2010

Netherlands... 29 January 2010 (Rotterdam International Film Festival)

UK... 1 February 2010 (Premiere - London)

Netherlands... 4 February 2010

France... 9 February 2010 (Premiere - Paris)

Spain... 12 February 2010

UK... 12 February 2010

Greece... 18 February 2010

Portugal... 18 February 2010

Russia... 18 February 2010

Sweden... 19 February 2010

France... 24 February 2010

Australia...  25 February 2010

Belgium... 3 March 2010

Denmark... 4 March 2010

Finland... 5 March 2010

Singapore... 11 March 2010

Argentina... 18 March 2010

Taiwan... 19 March 2010

Germany... 8 April 2010

New Zealand... 6 May 2010

RUN TIME:

100 Minutes

  

AKA:

Der Einzelgänger – Germany
Direito de Amar – Brazil

En enda man – Sweden
Enas andras monos – Greece
Sólo un hombre – Argentina
Um Homem Singular – Portugal
Un hombre soltero – Spain
Un homme au singulier – France (working title)

FILMING LOCATIONS:

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Pasadena, CA, USA

Santa Monica, CA, USA

Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park, Agua Dulce, CA, USA

DIRECTOR: Tom Ford

WRITER: Christopher Isherwood (novel), Tom Ford (screenplay), David Scearce (screenplay)

PRODUCER: Tom Ford, Chris Weitz, Andrew Miano, Robert Salerno

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Eduard Grau

Cast:

Colin Firth... George Falconer

Julianne Moore... Charlotte (Charley)

Matthew Goode... Jim

Nicholas Hoult... Kenny

Ginnifer Goodwin... Mrs. Strunk

Kerry Lynn Pratt... Blonde Secretary

Ryan Simpkins... Jennifer Strunk

Teddy Sears... Mr. Strunk

Aaron Sanders... Tom Strunk

Adam Shapiro... Myron Hirsch

Jenna Gavigen... Other Secretary # 1

Adam Gray-Hayward... Russ

Paul Butler... Christopher Strunk

Ridge Canipe... Young Guy

Alicia Carr... Other Secretary # 2

Jon Kortajarena.... Carlos (the hustler)

Paulette Lamori... Alva

Brad Benedict...Tennis Hunk

Paulette Lamori... Alva

Lee Pace... Grant

Marlene Martinez... Maria

Ridge Canipe... Young Boy

Elizabeth Harnois... Young Woman

Erin Daniels... Bank Teller

Tricia Munford... Cashier

Uncredited

Don Bachardy... Don (professor in teacher's lounge)

Brad Benedict... Tennis Player

Jon Hamm... Hank Ackerley (voice)

Mimi Page... Party Girl

Sarah Smick... Bookstore Cashier

 Production Companies

Fade To Black Productions

Depth of Field

Artina Films

Distributors

IM Global Film, LLC (foreign sales)

The Weinstein Company (USA) (Germany) (all media)

Icon Film Distribution (UK) (Australia) (all media)

Mars Distribution (France) (theatrical)

Ascot Elite Entertainment Group (Switzerland) (all media)

CatchPlay (Taiwan) (all media)

Festive Films (Singapore) (all media)

Forum (Israel) (all media)

Archibald Films (Italy) (theatrical)

Cathay-Keris Films (Singapore) (theatrical)

Cinéart (Netherlands) (theatrical)

Diamond Pictures (Argentina) (theatrical)

Senator Filmverleih (Germany) (theatrical)

Alliance (Canada) (all media)

FS Film Oy (Finland) (all media)

Gulf Film (United Arab Emirates) (all media) (Middle East)

Nu Metro Productions (South Africa) (all media)

PVR Pictures (India) (all media)

Paris Filmes (Brazil) (all media)

Village Roadshow Greece S. A (Greece) (all media)
MUSIC: Abel Korzeniowski, Shigeru Umbayashi

Stillness of the Mind
Drowning
Snow
Becoming George
George's Waltz (1)
Daydreams
Mescaline
Going Somewhere
A Variation on Scotty Tails Madeline
Carlos
La Wally
Stormy Weather
Green Onions
Blue Moon
Swimming
And Just Like That
George's Waltz (2)
Sunset
Clock Tick

SYNOPSIS: The setting is Southern California and our moment in time is officially the early sixties. We meet George Falconer (Colin Firth), a gay college professor, as he learns that his lover Jim (Matthew Goode) has died in a car wreck. Grief overwhelms him, and his “invisible status” in society begins to close in again. Suicide seems the best way out. But a mad night with Charley (Julianne Moore), his best girlfriend from England, and the unexpected attentions of an angora-sweater-clad young man (Hoult) make George think twice.

Reviews
A Single Man -- Film Review
By Deborah Young
Bottom Line: Sensitive and stylish, Tom Ford appeals beyond gay audiences.

Designer Tom Ford makes a surprisingly successful leap from the fashion industry to the big screen with "A Single Man," a standout directing debut about a gay college professor who loses his longtime partner. The theme of the search for meaning after a great loss is developed with great sensitivity, thanks to Colin Firth's moving performance in the main role, and should help the film go beyond gay audiences, who will be its strong supporters, to attract the more mainstream attention of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Far From Heaven."

Based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, the screenplay by Ford and David Scearce is concise and to the point. It opens on a fatal car crash in 1962, in which Jim (Matthew Goode) is killed. George Falconer (Firth) learns about his lover's death the next day when a relative phones, but he is warned not to attend the funeral of the man he lived with for 16 years.

Broken-hearted and alone, he seeks comfort from his long-ago flame, now friend, Charley (Julianne Moore), who is obviously still in love with him. But George is too devastated to be interested in either sex, and even rebuffs the approach of a hot young hustler played by Jon Kortajarena, who is a true James Dean lookalike. He tries to avoid getting involved with his student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult of "About a Boy"), who is just discovering his sexual preferences and aggressively courts the older man. Instead, he makes plans for committing suicide.

Most of the action takes place over the course of a single day in Los Angeles in the early '60s, when being gay was socially disapproved of by many. The film brushes ever so lightly on the issue of discrimination, first implicitly, when George lectures his students on how society fears what it is not, and later in a beautifully calibrated tete-a-tete between George and Charley, when she insinuates George and Jim did not have a "real relationship."

Through snatches of their life together, it is apparent that George and Jim had a very real and loving relationship whatever 1960's America thought. Their love story is contrasted with the next-door neighbors, who are down-to-earth suburbanites busy raising families and building nuclear bomb shelters. When a colleague tells George there won't be time for sentiment when the bomb falls, George characteristically retorts that he's not interested in living in a world without feeling.

Firth's measured performance, delivered in a clipped British accent, has just the right restraint, and the intelligent dialogue is a pleasure. Moore is glamorous and likeable as the alcoholic divorcee Charley, adrift without a husband. Goode and especially Hoult are just too perfect to be true, but they serve the purpose of offering George good reasons to stay alive.

In contrast to Firth's underplaying, the directing has its overblown, operatic soul. Ford is unafraid of such cringe-worthy moments as playing an opera solo over a suicide attempt, or having a nattily dressed symbolic figure in Tom Ford Menswear give the kiss of death to the recently departed.

In the same spirit, tech work is satisfyingly bold. Dan Bishop's stylish production design and Eduard Grau's cinematography set the film in a romantically idealized '60s world. The film score, written by Abel Korzeniowski and Shigeru Umebayashi, is variegated and full of lush orchestral themes that salute Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann, among others.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/a-single-man-film-review-1004011682.story
 
*** Minor Spoilers ****
By Marilyn Ferdinand

A lot has been made about superstar fashion designer Tom Ford entering the movie business with his own production company, Fade to Black. Now we have Fade to Black’s first film and Ford’s directorial debut, an adaptation of the 1964 Christopher Isherwood novel A Single Man. Although Ford costumed Colin Firth, who plays the title character George Falconer, and his eye for fashion photography is apparent, this is not the work of a dilettante. A Single Man is a slightly acerbic, affecting look at an emotion—deep grief—that is more closeted today than its gay protagonist was during the film’s 1962 setting.

The film opens on a snowy landscape in which we gaze down and move in on an overturned car and the body of a man half out of the vehicle, laying on his back. A figure moves into the frame and stoops down to examine the body. The eyes are fogged; the man is unmistakably dead. The figure, George Falconer, leans over and gingerly kisses the man on the lips. We, like George, are suddenly pulled into present time as he awakens with a start from this dream. In voiceover, George says he dreads waking up, that it actually hurts. Only in his dreams can he be with Jim (Matthew Goode), his beloved partner of 16 years who died eight months before in a car crash in his native Denver.

George prepares for his day teaching English literature at a Los Angeles college in a bit of a daze. Memories of Jim intercut reality. He remembers when they moved into George’s glass house and Jim tried to hold and kiss George. George was worried the neighbors would see them, but Jim says, “We’re invisible,” in an oblique statement about being gay. The real world intrudes again as Charlotte (Julianne Moore), George’s old friend from London and current neighbor in a tony part of Santa Monica, phones to invite him over for dinner. He demurs, but then reconsiders. “What time?” “7 o’clock.” George hangs up, looks fruitlessly in his refrigerator for something to eat, and pulls a loaf of bread out of the freezer. He bangs it on the counter. Frozen solid. Close up of a cup of coffee and George filling his briefcase with the novel Time Must Have a Stop by Isherwood buddy Aldous Huxley and the teaching materials that go with it, and an empty revolver. His maid Maria (Marlene Martinez) arrives to clean up. She is worried about how unwell he looks. George chides her for keeping his bread “too fresh” in the freezer and then, uncharacteristically, tells her how much he values her.

George feels useless—uninspired and uninspiring to his TV-addicted, conventional students. In class, he carries out his lecture and discussion on autopilot—Ford doesn’t even show us most of the class, preferring to linger seductively on a blonde in the front row who looks the world like Claudia Schiffer and her male companion Kenny (Nicholas Hoult). George launches into a speech about fear, fear of the unknown, the different, the Other. After class, Kenny runs after George, asking him why he doesn’t lecture like that all the time. “It would be misunderstood,” George says about his elliptical way of not quite declaring he is a gay man who is suffering the grievous loss of his partner. He questions Kenny about his girlfriend. Kenny denies they are a couple: “The last thing I want to talk about is Lois.” He invites George for a drink. “Not today. I’m going away.”

George goes to his bank and empties his safe deposit box. He goes to a gun shop to buy bullets. The teenage clerk notes his gun is pretty old. “We’re having a two-for-one special on handguns. Get one for the little lady?” “No, just the bullets.” He stops in the parking lot when he sees a smooth fox terrier in a car like the ones he and Jim had—they, too, died in the crash. He reaches through the window to play with it. The dog’s human comes out and indulges George until he starts smelling the dog. “Like buttered toast.” Off he goes to put his affairs punctiliously in order, lay out the clothes he wishes to be buried in, write good-bye notes, and then shoot himself in the head.

Ford evokes the depth of a loss that would push a man to suicide through flashbacks, dreams, and image distortions. The opening credits show a naked man floundering underwater, perhaps close to drowning or perhaps living in the water’s distorting muffle. The scenes in the present tend to be grainy, muffled, and somewhat colorless as well. The set decoration is precise to period detail, but in a way, this is almost a distraction, as George’s story is unmistakably universal and timeless. The one place where period detail works beautifully is the night in 1946 when George and Jim meet at an overflowing gin joint near George’s home. The celebratory postwar atmosphere and Jim looking so handsome in his Navy whites really evoke a time and place that synchs well with this first blush of love.

Ford also is obsessed with close-ups, particularly of eyes. In one scene he lingers over Moore painting the thick 60s eyeliner on one eye for what seems an eternity. In another, he has George park his Mercedes in front of two enormous eyes, shown in the screencap above. I guessed whose they were; give it a try. I’m not sure Ford accomplished much with the recurring visual except an extreme sense of intimacy that started to feel forced.

The characters of Kenny and Charlotte also feel forced. Kenny seems to be coming on to George for what can only be called the classic father-son gay relationship that was an integral part of gay culture at the time. (Indeed, George calls Jim modern and sure of himself for never having slept with a woman.) The sensuous, lingering shots of Hoult’s face seem merely advertising-seductive, but his character backs it up with a nighttime skinny dip in the ocean, echoing Jim’s comment about being invisible for the skittish George. Charlotte gives Julianne Moore yet another opportunity to play yet another uninteresting, rich housewife; this time she goes from having a whiff of the fag hag about her to playing the full-blown version. Does Moore keep getting cast in these terrible roles because that’s really all she can do? Come on, Julianne, show us some more of your stuff.

Colin Firth, who is in every scene, carries this movie like Atlas. He’s neither too tragic, nor too flip. His bitterness is matched by a sardonic sense of humor. When he upbraids Charlotte for telling him it would have been nice for him to have a real relationship, he reveals the depth of his love and commitment to Jim and his rage at it not being legitimate in the eyes of the majority like nothing I’ve seen. This is a subtle allusion, I imagine, to the contemporary battle for gay marriage that has polarized the country. His final scene is heart-rending and appropriately romantic, if a bit old-fashioned. Firth had me at hello and kept me riveted right to the end. l

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2009/10/ciff-2009-a-simple-man-2009.php
 
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