A Single Man: Tom Ford goes to the movies

When Tom Ford vowed to make movies after his departure from Gucci, it kinda made sense – he’s an extremely visual type and proudly control-freakish by nature. But Ford’s choice to engage Julianne Moore and Colin Firth in his debut feature A Single Man came totally by surprise. Great actors both, they also happen to be approaching their 50th birthdays. Maybe that’s why the film has such a buzz about it, it seems serious as well as slick. That and the fact that after gorging on Mad Men, we’re primed to want more highly stylised stories from the 1960s. For the record, action in A Single Man revolves around Firth as George Falconer, a gay British college professor living in Southern California, and in true Ford fashion, he co-wrote, co-produced and directed the film. Wondering what life was like on set? Apparently Ford told Firth to shape up or ship out. “He told me I looked good, but I'd look better if I had a personal trainer,” Firth has said. But that’s not how Ford remembers it: “I told him he was fat,” he’s on the record as saying. A Single Man opens on 11 December in the US but Australian audiences will have to wait until 25 February.

Alicia Pyke