Director: Adrian Lyne
Writer: Vladimir Nabokov (novel), Stephen Schiff
Original Music: Ennio Morricone
Cinematography: Howard Atherton
Humbert Humbert: Jeremy Irons
Charlotte Haze: Melanie Griffith
Clare Quilty: Frank Langella
Lolita: Dominique Swain |
Call me a cynic but I'm always suspicious when a distributor comes out with a glossy media pack, often complete with photos and even cds! Immediately I think I'm being bribed into liking this film. Similarly the sort of brouhaha which has surrounded the release of "Lolita" left me expecting, at best, a mediocre film. Nevertheless I dragged myself along - greater love hath no critic!
Surprise, surprise... not only is "Lolita" anything but an endorsement of paedophilia, it is also a better than average film. I guess that's a lesson in how not to be persuaded by hype - positive or negative. I could so easily have missed a worthwhile film experience.
Controversy has always surrounded "Lolita". Valdimir Nabokov had difficulty in finding a publishing house willing to produce his 1956 novel and it was finally published by a small company in Paris. The late Stanley Kubrick's 1961 version with James Mason and Sue Lyon was met with outrage by sections of the community, and now we have Adrian Lyne's version.
In Nabokov's prose, this story of a middle-aged Englishman's sexual obsession with a twelve-year-old American girl has an irony that is difficult to capture on the screen. Both screen versions rely heavily on the novel for dialogue but, whereas Kubrick emphasises the black comedy, with a screen-stealing performance from Peter Sellers as Quilty, and keeps any sex and violence safely off the screen, Lyne's version focuses squarely on Humbert and his conflicting emotions - love, lust, passion, versus horror and remorse.
Adrian Lyne's "Lolita" is arguably more faithful to the 1956 Nabokov novel. It brings out more clearly the ways in which Humbert's unrelenting passion traps and stifles the young Lolita, encouraging her to resort to manipulative behaviour in order to maintain some control in an increasingly stifling situation. It also reveals Lolita as a knowing, if naive, participant.
The film looks great and the performances are superb. You will see Melanie Griffiths as you have never seen her before - plump and blowsy, a lonely and tragic suburban widow desperate for love. Dominque Swain as Lolita manages to alternate effectively between energetic and teasing teenager and blossoming, knowing young woman. At times you understand Humbert's attraction, at others you are tempted to laugh at his misguided desire. Inexperienced she may be, but she knows the score and she calls it as it is. Jeremy Irons is the perfect Humbert, creating just the right balance of attractiveness, almost innocence, with inappropriate desire and ultimate remorse. A driven personality who fools himself as much if not more than he fools other people.
"Lolita" avoids easy sensationalism, depicting the situation in shades of grey, rather than black and white. At times we feel for Humbert the man, but we are never even tempted to condone his actions. Watching the film it was difficult to imagine how anyone could object to this highly moral and tragic tale of ruined lives.
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