M O V I E S Love and Death on Long Island Directed by Richard Kwietniowski Starring John Hurt and Jason Priestly - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ALSO THIS WEEK Dawson's Creek The hyping of a so-called hit The Man in the Iron Mask Leonardo DiCaprio is king of the beasts John Sayles An interview with the director of "Men With Guns" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LAST WEEK The Big Lebowski The Coen brothers break out of the irony ghetto Twilight Older actors set aglow in Benton's small noir The Gingerbread Man Robert Altman goes Southern Gothic with his potent new thriller - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Blue Glow DAILY TV PICKS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - RECENTLY A full list of recent reviews, interviews and table talk. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE ARCHIVES MOVIES TELEVISION INTERVIEWS FEATURES

L ...O N G ..I SLAND ... idol _______ A SNOBBY, SHELTERED NOVELIST FALLS FOR A TEEN HEARTTHROB IN THIS VAMP OF THOMAS MANN'S "DEATH IN VENICE." BY CHARLES TAYLOR | As Giles De'Ath (he pronounces it "day-ahth"), the British aesthete/novelist of "Love and Death on Long Island," John Hurt suggests a reversal of the famous opening line of L.P. Hartley's "The Go-Between": "The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there." For Giles, it's the present that's unfamiliar terrain. Asked by an interviewer whether the 20th century plays any part in his work, he barely comprehends the question. When pressed -- does he, for instance, use a word processor? -- Giles says, rather testily, "I'm a writer. I write. I don't process words." Giles keeps pretty much to his well-appointed Hampstead home. Locked out of this sanctuary one afternoon, Giles decides to relax his disdain for what he calls "the cin-em-ma" and take in an E.M. Forster adaptation. But, multiplexes being one of those modern things that have passed him by, he wanders instead into the theater showing an American "Porky's"-style inanity called "Hotpants College II." "This isn't E.M. Forster," he exclaims with dawning indignation, when there appears to him, on the screen, a vision. In the role of a humiliated pizza-parlor waiter he sees a prone, ketchup-spattered youth who reminds him of Henry Wallis' portrait of the dead Chatterton. This fellow, though, is nowhere near as lofty. He's an American teen idol named Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestly), and Giles is immediately smitten. Soon he's surreptitiously poring over teen magazines for any scrap of information about his beloved and cutting out Ronnie's pictures for a scrapbook he labels "Bostockiana." He even permits a dread television and VCR into his study so he can watch Ronnie's films over and over. With "Love and Death on Long Island," writer-director Richard Kwietniowski makes a very pleasing feature debut, adapted from the short novel by the British film critic and novelist Gilbert Adair. Adair's book, a semi-satirical gloss on "Death in Venice," is both a reimagining of and a rebuke to Thomas Mann's novella. "Death in Venice," the story of the revered writer Aschenbach who, on holiday in Venice, becomes enamored of a beautiful young boy named Tadzio, is intermittently exquisite and poignant. It's also faintly ridiculous. Mann was writing about a man so totally consumed by culture that his physical impulses are foreign to him. The trouble with "Death in Venice" is that it feels like it was written by Aschenbach. It's lofty and refined and it lasts an eternity. Adair's novel starts in language that has a precise, misanthropic control, the voice of a man who's closeted in every way -- emotionally, sexually, socially. As Giles' infatuation with Ronnie escalates, the language becomes flowing, nearly rapturous in passages, as close as a man like Giles can ever get to sensuality. That doesn't mean Adair is falsely optimistic. He realizes that a modern day Ashebach, to woo his Tadzio, would need to immerse himself in pop culture, the culture of youth. Giles cuts himself off from the only world he has ever known and, in the book's climax, uses his writer's skills to ensure the same fate for his unattainable Ronnie. N E X T_P A G E _| A fish out of water in America

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