(1998 Feature Film)
Starring
John Hurt and Jason Priestley
Reviewed by Blase DiStefano
In Love and Death on Long Island, Giles De'Ath (John Hurt) is a widowed writer whose vocabulary doesn't yet include the word "change." He lives in the isolated world of his study where he writes and where his housekeeper (Shelia Hancock) serves his tea at the same time each day. But, as fate would have it, he locks himself out of his house and decides to take in a movie--which he hasn't done in 20 years! And since the film is based on a book by E.M. Forster, how bad could it be?
Again, fate steps in. The ticket he buys puts him in a theater seat watching Hotpants College 2. As he's about to leave, his eyes become transfixed on the young beauty who has just entered the picture--teen heartthrob Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestley). At that moment, the word "change" enters Giles' vocabulary, as does the word "crush" and all that that word implies: obsession, immaturity, desire, embarrassment, and the ever-self-defeating waiting by the phone. Add to this the fact that Bostock is straight, and you get a feel for what De'Ath, a much older man, must feel.
If, as a gay person, you've ever had a crush on a straight person, you'll be able to identify with De'Ath's dilemma. If, as a straight person, you've been the object of a gay person's crush, I only hope you handled it as well as Bostock does. Because of the sensitivity of the director (Richard Kwietniowski) and the skills of the actors, Love and Death on Long Island does not become maudlin. Instead, it is a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit.
["Love and Death on Long Island" played in March
1998
at Houston's Landmark Greenway Theatre.]
[This review ran in OutSmart magazine, March 1998.]
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