Entertainment

Goes Firth and prospers

Colin Firth finally leaves Mr. Darcy behind — and will likely net an Oscar nomination — with his deeply moving, career-redefining performance as a ’60s gay man struggling with death and isolation in “A Single Man.”

Firth, who has tended to mine a small repertoire of vocal and physical tics throughout his prolific career, has slimmed down considerably. He so intensely focuses on the essence of his character — from a 1964 short story by Christopher Isherwood — that Firth’s minimalist work cuts like a knife through this glacially paced movie.

PHOTOS: ‘A Single Man’ After Party

The directorial debut of designer Tom Ford is art-directed within an inch of its life, and Ford is so enamored of his prettily photographed (by Eduard Grau) compositions that virtually every shot is held twice as long as it needs to be.

But this fussy Wong Kar-Wai manqué can’t smother Firth’s deeply soulful performance as George Falconer, a closeted 52-year-old Britisher who is teaching literature to mostly bored students at a small Los Angeles college in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis.

George, who has never gotten over the accidental death of his partner of 18 years (Matthew Goode, seen in flashbacks) and has health issues, is plotting to take his own life with a pistol. He lays out his funeral clothes and papers as if he were dressing a window in Bloomingdale’s.

On what he expects will be his final day, George has a chaste flirtation with a sexy male hustler (Jon Kortarena) on his way to a farewell dinner with a tippling ex-lover (Julianne Moore, channeling Lynn Redgrave, and very good) who has never stopped lusting after George.

But George’s final encounter is with Kenny (Nicholas Hoult of “About a Boy,” who now looks like he stepped out of an Abercrombie catalog), a sexually precocious student in an angora sweater who is by turns intrigued and concerned about his favorite professor.

Gently rebuffed by George on campus, the determined student tracks down George to a bar. Some skinny-dipping follows, then a trip back to George’s apartment.

The film is mostly shot in subdued earth tones, but Ford has it burst into color when George is experiencing an emotional moment.

Truth be told, Firth’s transcendent performance in “A Single Man” renders that stylistic gimmick utterly unnecessary — Firth provides all the emotional color this movie needs, and then some.