Adaptation of the Christopher Isherwood novel detailing the planned last day of a homosexual English professor (an exquisitely tortured Colin Firth) grieving his dead lover, anally-compulsively tying up loose ends, saying his guarded goodbyes, practicing the proper posture to shoot himself in bed, laying out his burial attire with the helpful note, “Tie in a Windsor knot.” Fashion “guru” Tom Ford, in his directing debut, sees to it that the dumps are très chic, almost to be envied and emulated. He demonstrates convincingly a photographic eye to go along with a curatorial taste in the early-Sixties period, although the total ambience resembles that of a retro pictorial in Harper’s Bazaar rather than an accurate depiction of a gloomy Brit in sunny So-Cal during the Kennedy Era. And he controls the color saturation of his imagery as if through an IV, maintaining gray drained faded tones for the present tense, pedantically contrasted with florid flushed flashbacks; and any passing sensory sensation in the faded present, any flicker of life, any tremor of reanimation, any stir of passion, will bring a sudden surge of saturation. It’s a definite idea, even if a transparent one. With Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult, and Matthew Goode. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd
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