Gilbert De`Ath (John Hurt) is a reclusive writer whose work has a cult following. He`s stubborn, bordering on eccentric. He won`t use a word processor; in fact there`s no modern technology in his London flat. And he has disdain for no-smoking campaigns - he smokes wherever he pleases. One fateful day, locked out of his flat in the rain, he goes to a multiplex cinema to see an E.M. Forster film - but he stumbles into the wrong cinema and finds himself watching HOTPANTS COLLEGE 2, starring the delectable Ronnie Bostock, Jason Priestley. And so begins his strange, magnificent obsession.
This original and wholly delightful film was adapted by first-time director Richard Kwietniowski from a book by film critic Gilbert Adair. The theme is infatuation, but what gives the film its considerable charm is the unlikeliness of this particular infatuation - the obsessive lust a scholarly English fogey develops for the brainless star of films with titles like SKIDMARKS. John Hurt is quite splendid as the victim of this unusual form of amour fou, and Jason Priestly is perfectly cast as the thick as a brick Bostock.
