A Single Man (2009)

Colin Firth's strength is his ordinariness and he uses it here to great effect in fashion designer Tom Ford's assured directorial debut. Presenting a façade of dull and unemotional respectability as the eponymous single man, an English academic living in Los Angeles, he's seemingly your average Joe. However, in reality, he's struggling to come to terms with the death of his gay partner (Matthew Goode) at a time (the early 1960s) when attitudes were very different from what they are today. The impetus of the film concerns Firth's contemplation of whether life is worth living without his lover - he buys bullets for an old gun - so there is a kind of suspense as he seemingly prepares to end his anguish. Will the attempts of a male student (Nicholas Hoult) to break through his reserve or an evening spent with boozy best friend Charley (Julianne Moore) change his mind? Ford directs with panache and style, alluding mischievously to Hitchcock, both visually with a poster of Psycho and musically with Abel Korzeniowski's score echoing the great director's best-known composer Bernard Herrmann. It all adds to the drama and turmoil within Firth's beautifully realised character.