Corliss singles out A Single Man

In the same TIME feature Sasha quotes below (and I now see was the platform for The Lovely Bones preview a few days ago), Richard Corliss has high praise for Colin Firth in A Single Man, and for first-time director Tom Ford:

For close to three decades, Colin Firth has been a reliable, gently seductive leading man… But he never got that Role of a Lifetime that actors pray for ‚Äî until now, in Tom Ford’s adaptation of the Christopher Isherwood novel. The movie earned Firth the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival and ensures him serious consideration for an Academy Award.

Tom Ford ‚Äî the Texas-born fashion designer who for a decade was the creative director at Gucci ‚Äî financed this first feature himself. The producer couldn’t have hired a smarter director. Playing to Firth’s subtleties, he swathes the actor’s handsome, mourning face in the caresses of close-ups. Ford is also attentive to the varieties of Southern California sunlight, which lends A Single Man an orangey warmth to offset the bleakness in George’s frayed heart… Firth makes that ache subtly, splendidly visible.

Corliss explicitly describes a significant addition to Isherwood’s novella that has been hinted at more obliquely by other critics — so I’ve cut those spoilers out of this excerpt. I will say that the more I hear about this radical new plot point, the more it sounds like a stroke of genius, the sort of flourish that could boost the screenplay’s Oscar chances as one of those rare adaptations that might surpass the impact of its classic source.