‘Love and Death’ takes obsession to new heights> Hurt gives strong, nuanced performance

“Love and Death on Long Island.” Written and directed by Richard Kwietniowski. Based on the novel by Gilbert Adair. Running time: 93 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for language and sexual content). Nightly, April 27-30, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

When Giles De’Ath (John Hurt), a fussy, behind-the-times English writer of immaculately highbrow novels, locks himself out of his house, he ventures to a neighborhood cinema, where he hopes to view the film adaptation of an E.M. Forster novel.

He doesn’t.

As the film starts, so does the heavy panting and heaving bosoms — both on screen and from those titillated individuals occupying the seats around him. “This isn’t E.M. Forster,” De’Ath murmurs, and he’s right: It’s “Hotpants College II,” a film cut from the same spoiled, bitter piece of cheesecloth that produced “Porky’s” or — worse yet — “Porky’s Revenge.”

Disgusted, De’Ath rises — only to stop cold, his astonished face caught in the reflected light of the screen, when he glimpses the alluring image of Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestley), a teen idol with strong teeth and alarmingly big hair who was never meant to appeal to the geriatric set, but, alas, somehow has. Shaken, De’Ath reclaims his seat, his heart quickening as he falls headlong into Ronnie’s smile — and a life-altering obsession.

Based on the novel by British film critic Gilbert Adair, Richard Kwietniowski’s “Love and Death on Long Island,” which will remind some of Luchino Visconti’s “Death in Venice,” is a film that delights in the comic antics of De’Ath’s obsession before eventually exposing the deep loneliness and desperation that is at its core.

This is not a film about homosexuality. Indeed, one cannot imagine the rather prim and reclusive De’Ath warming sexually to anyone; in his drab tweed suits, he is quite asexual, an unhappy intellectual, rye bread without the yeast. We know he has been married, but we also know it was to a much older woman who died with the reputation of a tyrant.

No, what draws De’Ath to Ronnie rests entirely in his first image of the man: Stretched out on the countertop of a popular burger joint, his arm arched behind his head, Ronnie reminds De’Ath of Henry Wallis’ painting “The Death of Chatterton,” which thrills him. Here is a young man who can conjure art by merely striking an effortless pose. What a find!

What a nightmare. As De’Ath’s obsession grows, his once-quiet life quickly unravels as he loses himself in all things Bostock.

Embarrassed by his infatuation, he doesn’t buy, but steals magazines with names like Sugar because they contain glossy photographs of Ronnie that are ripe for clipping. Eager to view Bostock’s earlier works, De’Ath buys two foreign instruments of wonder — a television and a VCR — and rents “Skid Marks” and the effervescent “Tex Mex,” a film he feels could be about “the plight of the exploited Gastarbeiters.” One almost believes him.

Driven by Hurt’s strong, nuanced performance, “Love and Death on Long Island” is at its best while firmly rooted in British soil; with Bostock an ocean away, we too can daydream about all his possibilities. But when De’Ath flies to Chesterton, Long Island, to meet the young actor, those possibilities ebb along with Bostock’s mystery.

What a disappointment Bostock turns out to be — both to us and to a sadly disillusioned Giles. Still, it is precisely this disillusionment that gives Kwietniowski his best and most powerful moment in a film that understands how great a risk love can be — and sometimes how poignant its consequences.

Grade: A-

Video of the Week

“Cop Land.” Written and directed by James Mangold. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated R (for violence, language and adult content).

Midway into James Mangold’s “Cop Land,” a tense drama about dirty cops living in the fictional town of Garrison, N.J., Robert De Niro, perfectly cast as an Internal Affairs detective, turns to a newly fattened Sylvester Stallone and shakes his head. “I don’t know how you do it, sheriff,” he says. “Keeping all these cops in line. All blue, everybody packing, all together, one door down from the next. The wives borrowing the sugar. It’s like you’re the sheriff of cop land.”

Indeed he is. As Freddy Heflin, Stallone has his hands full with a town full of corrupt cops dealing drugs, burning houses down for the insurance, hustling for the mob, murdering anyone who dares to cross them — and hiding out a rookie cop wanted for killing two young men. With Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta and Janeane Garofalo, this film burns with talent — and a great story. See this.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith, a writer and critic who lives in Brewer, reviews films each Monday in the NEWS.