Before we get into whether or not A Single Man was good, bad or just another two hours of time rendered in film, it should be noted that the effort was Tom Ford’s directorial debut. The film earned a number of awards. What’s more Ford, somehow, pulled together seven million dollars himself to fund the film. How someone’s capable of doing that is so far beyond the scope of most people’s minds, it’s astounding.

Slightly less gay than Jim Carey’s I Love You Phillip Morris, A Single Man still deals with a gay man’s interaction with the wider culture. There’s a scene in which its lead, Colin Firth, who still isn’t as amazing as everyone else maintains, hears a kid tell him her father doesn’t care for him since he’s light in the loafers. Of course, the girl goes on to explain that she doesn’t really know what the means, but believes her brother suffers the same affliction. Apart from a few scenes involving the neighbor’s Firth’s George character doesn’t run into a great deal of discrimination.

What seems to have been missed, for the most part, is that A Single Man doesn’t really tell the story of a gay man, so much as it tells the story of a guy who lost the love of his life and has to deal with it in any way mitigating the pain he feels. Certainly, George is gay even if the character occasionally takes an evening in the company of Julianne Moore’s Charlotte. The woman’s relatively aware of the situation, but persists in her desire to court the fellow Britisher.

The aspect of A Single Man that probably troubled a few critics – or even some of the American public – is George’s behavior after his partner’s death. In attempts to console himself, George shuttles back and forth between the aforementioned Charlotte and a forward male student whose a part of one of his classes at school. There’s a wealth of nude swimming and generation jumping love, but nothing beyond what occurs in just about ever Hollywood love story currently making tens of millions of dollars up the street from where you live. Yeah, it’s a double standard. And no, people probably aren’t going to get used to various sexual orientations any time soon. So, while A Single Man wasn’t really a tremendous film, it was both extolled and chastened because of its content. Both are wrong.