Love and Death on Long Island.

Let's just say that you did not see Love and Death on Long Island, as I did, the day after seeing Boogie Nights and panic that we were in for a siege of movies featuring pathetically closeted characters who live in two of the world's gayest capitals (London and Los Angeles, respectively) yet somehow feel compelled to focus their romantic energies on straight meat. Let's also speculate, for the hell of it, that you did not write for a Long Island newspaper, as I do, and were not hung up on the fact that not a single location in the film looked or felt remotely like Long Island (it's actually Nova Scotia) and that the local folk who populated the motels and cafes were so removed from anyone you've ever met in Nassau or Suffolk counties, they could be from, well, Venice, Italy.

Then, maybe, just maybe, you will succumb to the modest charms of Richard Kwietniowski's vaguely Thomas Mann-ish scenario (adapted from a Gilbert Adair novel) about an aging British widower (John Hurt) who obsesses over a pretty young American film actor (Jason Priestley). You might even chuckle at the Monsieur Hulot-ish disorientation of Hurt's technologically clueless writer as he solves the mysteries of multiplex cinemas and videocassette recorders.

You could also, instead, conquer your own VCR, rent Jacques Tati's Playtime or Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, and spare yourself the letdown.