LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND By Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Cinepix Film Properties Director: Richard Kwietniowski Writer: Richard Kwietniowski Cast: John Hurt, Jason Priestley, Fiona Loewi, Sheila Hancock, Maury Chaykin, Gawn Grainger, Elizabeth Quinn, Linda Busby, Bill Leadbitter, Ann Reid In one scene of this film, Giles De'Ath (John Hurt) announces its theme in a conversation with teen idol Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestly): "You can discover beauty and love in unexpected places." The central conceit is that two opposites can form a bond of sorts, even a love however unrequited. "Love and Death on Long Island" features a tour de force role for John Hurt, perhaps his best film ever. He seems to have cameraman Oliver Curtis on a long-chain set of handcuffs: Hurt appears in virtually every scene. His performance is so professional--at once amusing and poignant--that we in the audience cannot tire of him, even if the object of his affection, a teenaged movie store, ultimately does. Yet another story of culture clash, a theme we have seen recently in "The Edge" (the scholarly and passive Anthony Hopkins teaming up with the dashing and sportive Alec Baldwin) and in "Going All the Way" (the nerdy Jeremy Davies finding a soulmate in the outgoing Ben Affleck), "Love and Death" binds a duo who are radically different from each other. Yet you can't help believing the match. John Hurt inhabits the role of Giles De'Ath, a London-based writer of scholarly books and lecturer in the museum circuit, who enters a movie house to catch an adaptation of an E.M. Forster novel. Instead, the screen shows a vapid, teen- targeted exploitation work, "Hotpants College II." Befuddled and bemused, De'Ath looks at his watch and is about to leave when he catches its impossibly handsome young star, Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestley), and it's love at first sight. The aging widower shucks off his research into ethereal matters and begins to collect what he calls Bostockiana--the star's videos, magazine articles such as one about "Hollywood's Most Snoggable Fellas!!" and assures his housekeeper (Sheila Hancock) that he is too busy to have her cleaning his room. Flying to Long Island to meet his new hero on his home ground, he flatters Bostock's supermodel girl friend Audrey (Fiona Loewi) to gain entrance to Bostock's home in Chesterton, meets the idol, and tries to persuade Ronnie to eschew banality and return with him to Europe to pursue arthouse fare. "If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be writing 'Hotpants 3'," he assures the incredulous young man. "Love and Death on Long Island" scores most in its first portion, before De'Ath leaves his London residence for the states, in its sendup of a nineteenth-century sort of man who is at bay with modern technology. To capture Bostock's movies, he buys a VCR--though he at first believes a microwave machine can display movies--but has to be convinced that he needs a TV set to hook it up with. Asked in an interview whether he has a word processor, he replies indignantly, "I write: I do not process words." When he sets up an answering machine in his home, we know that the man is driven by irrational impulses. Maury Chaykin has a delightful role as the owner of the Chesterton town dive, a salt-of-the-earth American who assures his guest from London that he has "the best hash browns you ever had." "That goes without saying," responds the newly-energized intellectual, taking a break from his bangers and mash. "In Europe film can change the way people think," De'Ath contends. A clever and thoroughly entertaining "Love and Death on Long Island" proves his point. Not Rated. Running Time: 93 minutes. (C) 1997 Harvey Karten
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