In the climax scene when John Hurt finally confesses to Jason Priestley why he's insinuated himself into his life, Hurt brings up such couples as Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, Jean Cocteau and Raymond Ratiguet. Watching the film I thought of another of Cocteau's famous same sex liaisons, Cocteau and actor Jean Marais. It seems closest to what Hurt fantasizes for himself with Priestley.
With an obvious bow to Thomas Mann who wrote about a similar story in Rome, Love And Death On Long Island concerns a middle aged writer with the gruesome name of Giles De'Ath played by John Hurt. He's a cultured gay man who lives alone and has pretty much let life pass him by. He does without television, a computer, but is persuaded to go to the cinema in London which he hasn't visited in over 20 years because an adaption of one of E.M. Forster's stories is on the bill.
Instead he buys a ticket for a teen sex comedy flick, Hot Pants College II and is struck dumb by the physical beauty of one of the cast members, Jason Priestley. It happens to all of us be it the same or the opposite sex, but Hurt decides he has to get close to him and never mind those pesky laws about stalking.
He researches his love object from, where else, those adolescent teen magazines. And finding out he lives in the Hamptons out in Suffolk County, Hurt goes to America and then takes that long ride from Penn Station out to the Hamptons to see if he can arrange an 'accidental' meeting.
It works beyond Hurt's wildest expectation, though Priestley's girl friend, fashion model Fiona Loewi doesn't know quite what to make of Hurt. How it all ends you have to see the film for.
Jason Priestley certainly didn't have to do much research to play teen idol Ronnie Bostock. He was fresh from 90210 as Brandon Walsh and certainly his life was its own research. He could have played it shallow and that would have been an easy and acceptable way out, but Priestley taps some deeper emotions in his performance.
Love And Death On Long Island was shot on Nova Scotia which certainly passes for the Hamptons. This review is dedicated to that duo that Hurt had aspiration of emulating, Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais.
