Alongside a depressingly long list of films snubbed for a Best Picture Oscar nomination in favour of The Blind Side, including (500) Days of Summer, Crazy Heart, The Messenger, and The Road is the masterful character drama A Single Man. Superbly played by Colin Firth in his career-best performance, this is the role that demonstrates like no other his incredible ability to slink into the shoes of extremely complex individuals.

A Single Man takes place in early 1960s Los Angeles, revolving around George Falconer (Firth), a British college professor who cannot shake his all-consuming grief following the sudden death of his lover, Jim (Matthew Goode), and resolves to end his life before the day is out. Through three interactions – with an old friend (Julianne Moore), a Spanish male prostitute (Jon Kortajarena), and an idealistic young pupil (Skins star Nicholas Hoult) – George attempts to find a way to temper his grief before it is too late. Director Tom Ford takes us on an extraordinary existential journey that cleverly captures the essence of the French New Wave, while featuring, in Firth’s exceptional performance, one of the most nuanced and universally relatable portrayals of a homosexual in recent cinema history.

Through several opening scenes, Ford does well not to skirt around awkward exposition, such as when George learns that he isn’t invited to Jim’s funeral. Rooted well within the historical context of a pre-counter cultural upheaval, and combined with some gorgeous glimpses of George’s reverie, it is painfully, literally clear that George wants nothing more than to “lie down” next to his dead lover. Content not to allow Firth the easy way out through mere floods of tears, Ford also takes a pleasantly unusual approach to the subject of bereavement, reconfiguring it through a rare “queer gaze”, most startlingly when George spies on the heterosexual family next door, and imagines how grand their life must be.

Film critic Laura Mulvey has written at great length about the male gaze; how women are – in a field primarily written and directed by men – subjugated through a lens with dominantly male, heterosexual aspirations and values. However, Ford inverts this premise entirely, with lingering shots on glistening, robust male bodies depicting a very different male gaze in a unique, extremely well crafted manner.

While fashion designer Ford may not be the first name to pop into your head when you think of an expertly-crafted character piece, his contribution to the film is nothing short of exemplary; embossing the film in poetic, yet skilfully unpretentious cinematography, Ford frequently washes the colour out of the picture to reflect George’s drained view of life, before pumping it full of vivid scarlet when he chances upon something beautiful, like a flower. While unsubtle, the film doesn’t suffer from over-direction like other attempts by aestheticists to break into the film industry (such as Tarsem’s The Fall), most obviously because this is a film with real, gut-punching substance.

While Firth rightly dominates at front and centre, Julianne Moore and Nicholas Hoult particularly add well-roundedness to proceedings; Moore nails the British accent, and is most interesting when admitting that she views homosexual relationships as less than heterosexual ones, while Hoult, as representative of the youthful optimism now missing in George’s life, fits the part like a glove and manages a staggeringly convincing American accent. This isn’t to forget the smaller contributions either; Goode pitches the sensitivity of his role just right, and Kortajarena, who chews through dialogue with Firth over a gorgeous background of pink, smog-filled L.A. air, is also stellar.

For its moments of optimism, though, it never escapes the grim reality of the situation, that George is a terminally lonely, heartbroken man, whose loss cannot be substituted with sex, drugs, or alcohol. Perhaps most disturbing is how banal George’s preparations for suicide are, for he carefully prepares letters, lays out what he wants to wear at his funeral, and even leaves important items such as keys ready for whoever is to find him. Indeed, while the film concedes that death is in all of our futures, its astoundingly tense final reel finds dignity and poetry in what could, in the wrong hands, be a maudlin and overly dreary scenario.

For all of its visual splendour and thematic nuance, the film absolutely belongs to the brilliant Firth, whose quiet downward spiral is transfixing, combining the contemplative poetry of American Beauty with a heartbreaking character study reminiscent of The Wrestler. Thanks to an Earth-shattering performance from Firth, combined with arresting visuals and great supporting work, A Single Man is a heart-rending but richly rewarding and supremely touching drama.