Ford's only achievements here are in finding good 60s antiques and making Colin Firth unappealing for the first time in his career. Firth's George comes across as but a bland, prematurely aging supposed-intellectual (his college lecture is lame beyond belief) and emotional eunuch. Everything implies he is in the deepest violin-grating grief, but it looks like nothing more than a suicidal sulk (and apparently he was much the same when the love of his life was alive).

The story had so much potential; yet none of it is explored. Interesting questions are raised, then dropped. Contradictions (blatant mistakes) abound. Has George attempted to get his dog back? Attend the funeral service no matter what? Visit his lover's grave? Apparently he couldn't be bothered; why should we bother about him? A girl mentions George's eyebrows, which are completely hidden behind his glasses, but apparently she's developed an opinion about them nonetheless. George and his lover laugh about a neighbor's child getting peed on by their dog. When we see the kid 8 months later, he appears to be 4-5 years old. Wow, way to pick on someone your size, tools! So much pointlessness coupled with stupidity. Finally George's 8 months of holier-than-thou grief (on which we've now wasted an hour and a half that felt like 8 months) are apparently about to be washed away by a replacement young hunk he's known for 24 hours. Profundity!

I went in expecting a stylized but effective movie, but the direction is inept beyond belief: meaningless abuse of slow motion (in an already excruciatingly slow movie); meaningless use of drastic color shifts; meaningless use of black & white film; meaningless styling; Humbert Humbert shooting of a beskirted prepubescent girl (slo-mo from the ground up); underuse of good actors; implied ridicule of women characters (Julianne Moore, still the most interesting part of the movie) — they're all vapid and/or desperate; meaningless “look-at-me-Architecture-Digest!” set selection; constant focusing-in on Firth's face, though the cuts selected show over and over nothing but the same doughy inertia.

When the Nicholas Hoult character says “The present is boring.” mid-movie, it was a perfect description of the experience. Stay away!!! Rent “Death in Venice” instead. This movie is but a shadowy star-featuring Vogue editorial rip-off of that masterpiece. Also, as an angst-ridden 60s piece, proves what an exceptionally good job Mad Men is doing.

Ford threatens to make a movie every three years — the horror; the tedious, tedious horror!