The kiss of death. It's a concept that has been done to...well, to death. There isn't a whole lot of kissing in A Single Man, by my count there are 4 significant ones. Ones that I can remember anyway, I might have missed George fooling with the lips of his young student, but hey. The four that stuck out to me were the one pictured above between George and Jim, when they were both alive, the two kisses after death from fantasy George and ghost Jim at the beginning and end of the film and finally the awkward kiss between George and his lady friend.
What drew me to the kisses was how the movie is open and ended, (or sealed, as it were) with a kiss. The first was from George to his then dead partner Jim in a dreamscape. The second was from Jim to his now recently heart attacked George. I think what this film spoke to me on was the idea of how kisses tend to be periods on the end of moments. You kiss someone before the go to work, before they leave for war, before they leave your life forever. You also kiss to begin things, in some countries it's a common greeting. In our culture it's how we finally begin marriage. For many, you're not really "in a relationship" until you kiss them.
The kiss between George and Jim in the middle is the only one featured when the two of them are still alive, and in a lot of ways it seems kind of meaningless. To me this made me think of how we tend to live in a world of extremes, it's all about the first impressions you made and how you spent your last day, your first and your last kiss. All the stuff in the middle of that doesn't actually count of mean anything.
The kiss between George and his female friend was and exhibition on how one may try to futilely start a relationship with actions typically reserved for people who actually want to be in them. She sees the kiss as this beginning point like so many of us do, but unfortunately just because it always begins that way doesn't mean that simply doing it will bring about that moment and those feelings. It was her first with him, but because of the circumstances surrounding it, it was also her last.
