“[T]he film belongs to Hurt. Everything about his love-crushed fogey is authentic... a character to rank alongside his Quentin Crisp and John Merrick.
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Curmudgeonly widowed author Giles De'Ath (John Hurt) keeps himself to himself, eschewing all things modern. One day, while trying to see an E. M. Forster movie, he accidentally enters the wrong theatre and sees the teen flick Hotpants College II starring Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestley). Giles is smitten by Bostock’s beauty and quickly becomes obsessed with him - to the extent of traveling to America to meet his beloved in person. Adapted from Gilbert Adair's cult novella, Love and Death on Long Island is a quirky and surprisingly poignant take on Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.
