The Thousands

Fashion designer Tom Ford’s directorial debut is high modernism at its most mannered and hallucinatory. Perhaps Ford means to express the increasingly unreal quality of life for a man who’s decided to die. But secretly, I think he’s just wallowing in aesthetics. That scene with the topless tennis players is a bit much.

Eight months after the love of his life, Jim (Matthew Goode), died in a car crash, LA-based British expat George Falconer (Colin Firth), a literature professor, is struggling to maintain the appearance of normality. Over one momentous day, his resolve to commit suicide fluctuates through encounters with the apple-pie family next door, his louche best friend Charley (Julianne Moore), a Spanish hustler, Carlos (Jon Kortajarena) and a (bi-)curious student, Kenny (a bronzer-doused Nicholas Hoult).

Ford’s treatment of pre-Stonewall homosexuality may be circumspect, but Firth excels at milking it of its subtexts. He’s the quintessential repressed Englishman. But unexpectedly, he’s also wickedly funny. I cared what happened to George. It’s just a pity that Mad Men aestheticised early-’60s Americana before A Single Man. But Ford knows it: see if you recognise the voice on the phone delivering George his terrible news.