Director Tom Ford talks to AfterElton about an emotionally raw scene in “A Single Man”

If you’ve seen A Single Man, then you know how remarkable a film it is with Oscar-caliber performances from leading man Colin Firth and from Julianne Moore who plays his former lover and longtime best friend.

There is a scene between Firth and Moore that really surprised and upset me. I wondered about it and was so glad to read Brent Hartinger’s interview with director Tom Ford on AfterElton.com because he asked Ford about the scene where Moore’s character of Charley blew my kind.

Here is that portion of the interview:

AE: Well, I think you deserve credit for recognizing that it really worked. The second scene is when Charley mentions that she and George, what they had was something real and not an imitation, and his furious reaction. And even more interesting was her defeated reaction when she realizes, “Wow, he really doesn’t love me and I’m alone.” It was just emotion as raw as it gets.
TF: That scene I wrote. That comes from my own real life. I’ve had friends I’ve known for long periods of time that still don’t understand the relationship that Richard and I have. To this day, I even have friends who say something about my “lifestyle.” What is that? What lifestyle? I address [the “lifestyle” question in the movie] with the two guys on the sofa reading with the dogs.

That’s right out of my life. I have to pay my boyfriend to walk the dog, and he takes the money! I have to pay him twenty dollars. I have to actually have a bill in my hand, and he’ll take it from me and then he walks the dog.

The point is, I have friends who understand and know us, but they’ll still say things about our lifestyle. What lifestyle? We live together, we cook dinner together, we buy groceries, we go on vacation, we have the dogs, we share our lives because we love each other. What’s this lifestyle thing?

Charley’s reaction, she doesn’t really understand. After all those years, she should really understand. She thinks that what they had wasn’t really real, and as she says, it was a substitute for the real thing. But it is clear that, as she [later] says, she never had that: “I’ve never had that. I’ve never had anyone love me that way.” That’s something that has occurred, has happened with me with women.

There’s also an unrequited love aspect, as well, in that scene, Charley’s frustration. Whether she was a man or a woman, when you have slept with someone, and you have been given that physical access to them, and all of a sudden that physical access has been denied, yet they remained very close friends. For the person who is not allowed the access, it’s very painful. Always, in the back of your mind, you think, well, maybe one day, because you’ve had it before. The two of them slept together. And now, for the last sixteen years at least, they haven’t been sleeping together. That’s hard for Charley, and she also didn’t really understand his relationship.