I finally saw A Single Man, after urgings from friends -- I snapped it up at my local Korean bookstore the minute I saw the DVD on sale. Interestingly, although Koreans ostensibly disavow homosexuality as a Western import, they do seem to have a particular fascination with it, which made me less than surprised to see this DVD on offer. The second-highest grossing Korean film of all time, The King and the Clown, is a gay historical romance, as is another popular movie here, A Frozen Flower. In one of my classes on national cultures just last week, a female student demonstrated extensive familiarity with Tchaikovsky's love life....
But I digress. I liked A Single Man, especially for Colin Firth's wonderful lead performance. but I did not love it and would not rank it very high as a piece of cinema. For me, a gay romantic construct gets no special points just because it is gay. More to the point, is it true? The problem I have with A Single Man (which may go back to the Christopher Isherwood novel, but I'd have to check) is that the dead lover is improbably perfect -- a pure fantasy figure (especially for the era). As incarnated by the incredibly handsome Matthew Goode, he is heart-stoppingly attractive, funny, sensitive, intelligent, hot, dog-loving, comfortably way ahead of his time -- I mean, it's just too much. I can enjoy this as a Boy's Own Romance number -- the flashback depicting the lovers' first meeting is particularly delightful ("I think I'm taken") -- but as a director and co-scenarist, Tom Ford does nothing to complicate the romantic template even a little bit. A truly complex gay film such as the late Bill Sherwood's 1986 Parting Glances -- which features very handsome men, too, but puts them to much more interesting use -- is far ahead of A Single Man even though it came out 23 years before. A Single Man is pleasurable but ultimately rather regressive, I think.
As an instance of that regression, the "looks fascism" of the fashion industry where Ford resides is very much in evidence throughout the film. There is no one on significant display who is less than sexy and stunning (except for the maid, and who cares what the help look like, right?). Tom Ford's vision will not admit that anyone could be short or overweight or average-looking. The film would have been so much truer if the student-in-pursuit had been ordinary and unremarkable instead of a young male model type. Why should the professor kill himself, when he has two knockout sexual opportunities in one day (the other being the hustler), the likes of which most of us wouldn't encounter in ten years? Come on.
Breakfast is being served
3 years ago
2 comments:
I assumed that the perfectness of the Goode character was partly a construction of Firth's character's memory: grief had distorted his memories so that he felt he had lost perfection. I may be wrong, of course, but the early scene where Firth imagines himself into the car crash aftermath suggests not every flashback is a true record of events.
But I really did enjoy the film, and I love the book. I had low hopes because of the director's background, but I was pleasantly surprised.
What you suggest is quite possible! A friend of mine in a private discussion group felt that the perfection of the Goode character was in keeping with an over-determinedness that characterizes pretty much all the elements of the film: in her words, "it's so clearly a film by a model-turned-designer-turned-filmmaker, the production design, clothes, o.k., we get it, Tom-you're a stylista! Again, as you argue, a bit too over-the-top perfect- I also sensed a self-promoting Tom Ford advertising, as the clothes were all his designs. Wonderful eye candy, but sometimes the too-too perfection in the way a film looks is distracting, and doesn't itself make for a good film."
I do wish, that if Ford meant for us to doubt the professor's recollections in any substantive way, he had at least suggested that the lover might not have been 100% adorable, delightful, sensual, etc. Unless I missed something, Ford doesn't throw out any such hints directly.
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