Fridae

Better known as the former creative director of the Gucci brand, designer Tom Ford’s has made a big splash in a whole new industry over the weekend at the Venice Film Festival. His directorial debut A Single Man won the Queer Lion (for best gay movie) and lead actor Colin Firth brought home the best actor prize. (The Queer Golden Lion, established in 2006, is an unofficial award and is independent of the Venice festival.)

Having been nominated for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards (BAFTA) for his parts in Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones's Diary, the best actor award is said to be the most prestigious prize of Firth's career.

Based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood, the film is set is 1962. Firth plays a gay college professor experiencing a mid-life crisis after the accidental death of his lover played by Matthew Goode. He learns about his lover's death the next day when a relative phones, but he is warned not to attend the funeral of the man he lived with for 16 years, The Hollywood Reporter said in a review of the film.

“Brokenhearted and alone, he seeks comfort from his long-ago-flame-now-friend Charley (Julianne Moore), who obviously still is in love with him. But George is too devastated to be interested in either sex and even rebuffs the approach of a hot young hustler (Jon Kortajarena, a true James Dean look-alike). He tries to avoid getting involved with his student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), who is just discovering his sexual preferences and aggressively courting the older man.”

"One of the things I always loved about Christopher Isherwood... is that he always has gay characters because he was gay, but you never see the gay character struggling with his homosexuality or being tortured by it," Ford said.

"It's just a character going through life, and I loved that matter-of-fact depiction of life," the 48-year-old told AFP. "I didn't want this to be a 'gay film'. It's a universal film, about love and connection... The character happens to be gay, so what?" he added.

Making A Single Man "was very pure for me, a pure expression, probably the most personal thing I've ever done," he said.