It’s been an interesting evening. I caught A Single Man with a friend earlier, who told me a tale that continues to make me furious. She’s a playworker, and went with some of her colleagues for an after work drink. As it happens, her line manager is gay, as is another person above her in the hierarchy. A couple of other members of the team, one a volunteer, are not. And the most senior manager present and her girlfriend texted the parents of those junior colleagues to break the news that they’re gay. Because we all know how funny coming out is, and how welcoming families are of news like that.

All of which emphasises why A Single Man is set in 1962, at a time when homosexuality really was the love that daren’t speak its name, and lives could be blighted by the suspicion of it. Colin Firth has never been better than he is here as George Falconer, an English professor at a middling college whose male lover has just died. Only, who can he open up to about his feelings? Does he even have access to them himself, having constructed a life that scrupulously avoids any kind of emotional connection? It’s more than a conundrum, it’s a desperately lonely position he inhabits, one that’s hard for most people — even, I suspect, many modern gay people — to identify with.

We follow George as he goes about his business, an affable if somewhat distant man. He’s polite to his neighbours, flirtatious with the departmental secretaries, tangentially addresses issues around gayness with his students. And he even has a female confidante, and ex lover, in the form of the divine Julianne Moore as fellow English pal Charlie, who delights in her femininity and wonders what would have happened if she and George had been an item long term. Only Charlie doesn’t ‘get’ George any more than anyone else, George included.

The friend I saw the film with said she found the pace of the film slow, but when we discussed it realised that the story is packed with incident. As well as the business already alluded to, George has a close encounter with a Spanish James Dean wannabe, skirts round picking a guy up at a bar, and brings back one of his students home with him. Also, he has a groovy dance with Charlie that serves the same purpose as a sex scene would in most films, showing the two characters becoming closer through physical intimacy. Oh, and he puts a loaded gun in his mouth, and takes quite a while working out how to shoot himself in such a way that he causes minimum bother to his cleaner.

In other words, there’s plenty happening. But part of Tom Ford’s remarkable skill as director in this, his first film, is the way he segues from one scene to another in a very natural way. There’s an ease to it all, and that ease also encompasses the flashbacks and fantasy sequences within the story. Between the confidence of the direction and the strength of the performances, this really is a remarkable film.

As well as directing, Tom Ford co-produced and co-wrote the script with David Scearce, an adaptation of a Christopher Isherwood story. For the most part it’s a very capable script, though there were a few moments when it seemed too on the nose. Those nasal beats are few and far between, and maybe only perceptible to a curmudgeon such as myself.

Kudos too for music which complements the mood of the story to perfection: Abel Korzeniowski provided the bulk of the original score, and there’s skilful use made of period albums for good measure. In all, it’s as truly beautiful film and one that will stay with me for some time. And while it’s probably not fair to think about it in the light of my friend’s crass colleagues and the way they abused their power in a social context, it inevitably makes me wonder just how society has moved on from the era depicted here.