Alfalfa Entertainment

Curmudgeonly author Giles De'Ath, a widower with a marked distaste for modern popular culture, attempts to buy a ticket for a film adaptation of an E.M. Forster novel, but instead finds himself watching a tacky teen sex comedy. Yet when the beautiful Ronnie Bostock appears on the movie screen, Giles finds himself caught in a whirlwind of unanswered questions about both his own sexuality and his place in late 20th-century society.

Set on a steam-shrouded railway station and shot in high-contrast black and white, Richard Kwietniowski's film lovingly twists David Lean's stiff-upper-lipped romance Brief Encounter into a rich and witty contemporary melodrama, with two devilishly handsome young men standing in for Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard.