Critics reviews

Firth is all bottled anguish, the spark of life and feeling shut away within an invincibly British sense of propriety.

The very gorgeousness of the film, bolstered by references to Hitchcock and Antonioni, often threatens to work against its own supposed seriousness... [But "A Single Man"] is an honest reflection of its creator’s sensibilities and, for all its contradictions, it never fails to take the breath away.

A Single Man is measured, ironic, stylish and very slight. It would have been much slighter without the performance of Colin Firth holding it together.

Maybe the film is too pristine. In this world, dust doesn’t land, paint doesn’t peel and grass doesn’t grow... But nothing distracts from the empathy and understanding we have for George, and on that the film must live or die. Firth’s portrayal of a man repressing his grief while being unable to repress his instinct for love and for life is excellent and moving, while Ford’s balancing of depth and surface is precarious but ultimately winning.

[Ford's] flourishes are a little self-conscious... [but the film] is still a good frame for Firth's performance: a man who has had to construct or reconstruct a personality to bear the weight of loss, and whom ­society will not permit to grieve... It is a poignant, deeply compassionate portrait.

In many ways, "A Single Man" really is Firth’s show... A model of economy and restraint, Firth starts addicted to his broken heart and ends a man capable of seeing the beauty in the world precisely because he has given up on it. He roots George, and therefore the rest of Ford’s beautiful film, in dignity.

"A Single Man" is an absurdly ravishing piece of filmmaking. It's not simply that Ford has a ravening and righteous eye for cinematic composition and detail (you'd expect that from the Gucci resurrectionist and onetime guest editor of Vanity Fair); it's that everything fits perfectly, from titles to fin, but most of all Firth, who dons the role of George like a fine bespoke suit.

Ford's eye for period detail is exact; brief cutaways, incisive dialogue, and charged glances telegraph the cold-war paranoia and sexual alienation of the early 60s. The game cast, including Julianne Moore as the professor's onetime lover and Nicholas Hoult as an admiring student, is well served by cinematographer Eduard Grau, whose color washes, from desaturated tones to a Technicolor sunset, mirror the protagonist's swirling emotions.

"A Single Man" is suffused with beauty — it’s a movie conceived in a swoon... [Tom Ford] proves a born filmmaker with a rapturous eye.

A movie of quiet but potent emotional power, perfectly suited to [Firth's] singular gifts... It's [Ford's] finely calibrated storytelling, rather than self-conscious film references, that makes filmgoers care so deeply about George, a compassion they may not even realize they've developed until the film's final moments.

The first-time director Tom Ford, the famous fashion designer, has been faulted for over-designing the film, but perhaps that misses the point. Perhaps George has over-designed his inner vision.

The film is slowed by its own beauty, but it is salvaged by two majestic scenes... [George and Charley are] characters trying and failing to drown their hopes and regrets, [Firth and Moore] two strong actors refusing to be tight-laced by a director’s exercise in style: here is a mood piece looking for a fight.