Colin Firth and Julian Moore turn in stunning performances in Tom Ford’s debut drama, A Single Man.

A Single Man

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A deeply felt and slickly polished adaptation of a novel by Christopher Isherwood, the directorial debut by designer-turned-filmmaker Tom Ford primarily succeeds as a showcase for its star. Indeed, it’s exciting to see what Colin Firth can do when he’s pushed out of his two comfort zones, i.e., the bashful, tongue-tied Limey of Love, Actually and the Bridget Jones movies, and the more brooding hunk who puts Jane Austen readers in a tizzy. Here, he’s a rather more volatile presence, constantly shifting between acutely rendered notes of grief and desire. Already the subject of much awards-season buzz, Firth’s performance also compensates for flaws — and an overall fussiness — that might’ve otherwise seriously impaired Ford’s effort.

Elements of both of Firth’s most reliable personas are still visible in George Falconer, a professor and British expat living in early ’60s Los Angeles. George has been in an emotional deep freeze since the car accident that killed his longtime lover, Jim (Matthew Goode). As he proceeds through the first part of his day, mnemonic triggers — like the sound of a telephone ringing — herald flashback scenes of George and Jim in happier days, as well as George in the immediate aftermath of Jim’s death.

That George packs a gun in his attaché case before leaving the house is one indication of what he means when he says that “today will be different.” But his plan to put a decisive end to his suffering is complicated by his encounters with a series of people, including his boozy friend Charlotte (Julianne Moore), and Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), a mohair-clad student with an extracurricular interest in the pain-stricken prof.

Given the director’s illustrious fashion-world CV, it’s unsurprising that A Single Man is itself so impeccably composed. Yet some tactics prove to be too ostentatious, like the shifts between a predominantly pallid colour palette and a more vivid array of blues, oranges and pinks whenever George experiences a surge of feeling. Ford is similarly heavy-handed when it comes to the musical score, although George and Charlotte’s impromptu dance routine to Etta James’s “Stormy Weather” and Booker T and the MGs’ “Green Onions” rates as one of the movie’s most indelible moments.

That may also be because Moore is the only actor here who can really go toe-to-toe with Firth. Goode is charming but slight as the dearly departed Jim, and Hoult (previously best known as the tyke in About a Boy) is too tentative to be convincing as the lust object who will bring George back to the world of the living. Thankfully, Ford avoids the easy sentimentality that mars so many movies about characters trying to find their way out of a cloud of grief. Instead, his frankly erotic treatment of the material — as well as Firth’s potent mix of vulnerability and virility — makes it clear that George’s stirrings of new life originate from a region somewhat south of his heart.