The trailer for the Tom-Ford-directed-gay-period-suspense-drama, A Single Man, is up on youtube.

Tom Ford–formerly of Gucci, then of, well, Tom Ford–explained to the press during the Venice Film Festival (where the film made its debut) that cinema has been a direction he’s wanted to move in “forever,” and called A Single Man is “the most personal thing I’ve ever done; a pure expression.”

Ms. Longworth, for whom I’ve previously professed my love, gave the film an A- at Toronto, calling it both gorgeous and affecting.

I’m skeptical, mostly because the film looks so much like the very best pages of Vanity Fair (which is much like being skeptical because Fantastic Mr. Fox looks as carefully designed as The Royal Tenenbaums; it shouldn’t be a deterrent, but it makes me nervous that that’s all it is).  But Colin Firth is getting quite a buzz for what some are calling his best role on screen to date–and, certainly, you can’t have much of a higher pedigree than Christopher Isherwood (although I haven’t read the original novel).  I am a big fan, as well, of Matthew Goode (excepting that lamentable Brideshead travesty) and Nicholas Hoult (from About A Boy).

The question I’ve been turning over in my head for the past few hours, though, is whether I should be skeptical, in the first place, about any visual artist turning to film.  Shouldn’t the example of former painters–Julian Schnabel, Robert Breer, David Lynch, Peter Hutton–prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that those artists, trained in a purely visual medium (be it painting, sculpture, or, more to the point, fashion), who do make it to film often bring with them extraordinarily cinematic vision?  Don’t I prefer them, as a matter of fact, to the theater-director-turned-filmmakers? With the exception of the very best (Mike Nichols), I do.

I suppose I should wait and see, then, what Tom Ford can do.