Owen Gleiberman infatuated with A Single Man

Or as overnight tipster, j, puts it, “EW‚Äôs critic LURRVS this movie”:

Since the movie is set at a time before the lives of gay men were overtly politicized, and a man like George had to ‚Äúpass,‚Äù almost invisibly, through his life, his erotic and romantic feelings are forced to flower, exclusively and almost luxuriously, inside him. The result is that this tale of passion in an outwardly oppressive era accomplishes what so many gay films in our comparatively free era have not, which is to transcend the very notion that sexual orientation should be categorized…

Ford, a former fashion designer, became celebrated in the ‚Äô90s for reviving the houses of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, and make no mistake: He‚Äôs also a born filmmaker, with a rapturous eye, an instinct for how to stage a scene, and a feeling for that special place where sadness and happiness intertwine until you can‚Äôt pull them apart…

Firth’s performance is bound to win attention in this year’s Oscar race — he’s simply too good to be ignored. Julianne Moore is marvelous, too, as George’s divorced, tippling, slightly broken-down English chum, and so is Matthew Goode as Jim, who we see in flashbacks that present a domestic union of two men in the most simple, direct, and touching of terms. As Mad Man suggests, it may be a topsy-turvy world when we have to go back to 1962 to discover the people we maybe still are. But when that journey is undertaken with the debonair humanity that Tom Ford and Colin Firth bring to A Single Man, it’s one you won’t want to miss.

Those are not just highlights of Gleiberman’s review. He swoons like that from beginning to end. Check out the video interview with Colin Firth on the same EW page.