This film looks like an ad in Italian Vogue for homoerotic suicide fantasies. I don't mean that in a snide way (although, obviously: it is snide) but rather in a descriptive way.
Fashion advertisements, after all, do everything possible to glorify their subject. Tom Ford, a designer rather than photographer, nonetheless manages to imitate a style with which he is quite familiar. It also presents a melodramatic glorification of suicide: that is, the romanticism surrounding the act of suicide as envisioned by an individual with only the faintest intent of carrying it through. I do not get the sense from Colin Firth's performance, despite all assurances to the contrary, that (spoiler alert!) that he would have gone through with it himself in the end. What I get from the character is pathos, a wish to perfect one's death (possibly/probably in reaction to the sudden and unthinkable death of one's lover) in one's mind, and the film as that mental effort playing out on the screen. In short, I find the main character a bit solipsistic and I'm not exactly sure whether that adds to or detracts from the narrative.
I'm sure there are some things that I, as a straight male, may be missing in the subtext. Despite the dismissive way I treat the film above, I really did enjoy it, probably more as a tone poem than anything else.
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