Tom Ford's "A Single Man" wins Queer Lion at Venice Film Festival while Colin Firth named Best Actor. Watch Trailer

Although I did not do a good job of explaining, that's the hollywood approach that I mentioned. The focus on telling story rather than evoking emotion is done so that people (18 to 35 year old males will come to see the movie). This trailer is very much along the lines of evoking emotions about the characters. You see snippets of who they are. Of his day. That along with the music make you curious to find out more. The director and the marketing gurus assume you will know something about the movie and its story before you show up. A good filmmaker takes that into account. So, why not give the audience something unexpected? Not telling the story. Show the emotional arc of the characters.

 If you watch the trailer for "Little Children" you will see what I mean here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiJLJd7cH1c . This trailer like "A Single Man" is considered particularly emotionally effective. In fact, Little Children was considered one of best trailers in 2006. The lack of telling the story adds to the emotional impact of focusing on the characters.

 If you get a chance, check out the reviews it is getting at Indiewire, Variety, Empire etc. We can debate the visuals of the trailer, but the movie itself is supposedly very good. Here's the Indiewire review:

 "Yet interestingly, the film is less “a gay movie” - early reports placed it somewhere between “Un Chant d’Amour” and “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” - than a study of romantic yearning and erotic fascination, in which many of the main characters happen to be homosexual. (Ford declared, at the press conference, his intention to make a universal story, albeit filtered through the perspective of a gay man.) And if it is “a gay movie”, then it is one with barely a trace of Camp: the tone here is by turns contemplative, impassioned, elegiac ... but not for a moment does to descend to common kitsch. Nor is it ashamed, or furtive. On the contrary: this is a love that most definitely dares to speak its name.

 This is not special pleading - I’m certainly not suggesting this is a gay flick it’s “okay” for straights to like (and I suspect anyway that many won’t). But I do think it might represent a distinct step forward for American queer cinema, since in normalising the characters’ desire, and integrating them more or less seamlessly - and largely on their own terms - into a fully-realised fictional world, it abandons many of the tendencies that have stymied and continue to dog gay-themed movies: the descent into caricature; the tongue-tied hedging of the issue or - its obverse - the need for weary, Bruce LaBruce-like shock-tactics. Such strategies might have been necessary back in the dark days of 1970s, or even the 80s - but now? it’s 2009, folks. They’re here; they’re queer ... we’re used to it."

The last paragraph especially speaks to me because as someone who likes movies with gay characters I think much of what passes for gay entertainment these days is  in a rut, and has been since the 1990s. So, any movie that is a good movie first and foremost certainly is a well come shift.