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DVD REVIEW ARCHIVE
LOLITA (1998)
Vidmark / Trimark DVD (region 4)
d. Adrian Lyne; pr. Mario Kassar, Joel B. Michaels; scr. Stephen Schiff; novel. Vladimir Nabokov; ph. Howard Atherton; m. Ennio Morricone; ed. David Brenner, Julie Monroe; cast. Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, Melanie Griffith, Frank Langella (137 mins)

ORIGINAL MOVIE POSTER

Paedophilia remains one of the last taboos in American film. Although there have been several films to examine the subject, the more accepted of these efforts are often complex assessments of psycho-sexual aberration, with clear social contexts.

The main films to examine the dynamics between pedophile and child lover / victim are of course Pretty Baby and the original film of Lolita although it is the latter which perhaps comes first to mind due to its literary pedigree. Vladimir Nabokov’s original novel was a most controversial treatment of a perverse sexual obsession and when first adapted by Stanley Kubrick in 1962 made for a most unusual and sly black comedy. When Adrian Lyne remade the film in 1998, minus much of the heavy irony Kubrick had insisted upon, he found that the unspoken barrier against this subject matter still held sway over distributors. Following many protests particularly by die-hard Christian fundamentalists over the film for daring to tackle the subject, regardless of how it actually dealt with it or whether the protestors had even seen the film let alone were aware of its literary heritage, US distributors backed out. It was only after a successful stint on cable television that the film received a scant theatrical run and by that time the critical comparisons to Kubrick had run their course although the protests continued. On its own terms, the film is one of director Lyne’s finest achievements.

Lolita concerns the relationship between an English academic (Jeremy Irons) and his beloved “nymphet” Lolita (Dominique Swain in a wonderfully assured and flirtatious debut).

TRAILER

Irons comes to America in order to assume a teaching position. He seeks lodging at a house owned by a rather pretentious but coarse widow (Melanie Griffith) but is reluctant to take it until he sees her young (fourteen year old) daughter, who reminds him of the one great lost love of his youth (an incident depicted in an explanatory opening sequence). He moves in and eventually marries Griffith only to be next to Swain. Soon Griffith sends Swain away to summer camp to be alone with her new husband. Next she intends boarding school. When Griffith reads Irons’ diary and finds out about his perverse intentions regarding her daughter and his contemptuous scorn for Griffith herself, she threatens to expose him. Fate soon intervenes. Irons gets Swain from camp and proceeds to drive her across the country to his next teaching assignment all the while entering into a sexual relationship with her that he finds both liberating and guilt-inducing in its hopeless infatuation. In time, however, he intersects with another sexual predator (Frank Langella) and shortly believes that someone is following him on the road. Swain seems increasingly distant and Irons may be faced with the loss of his beloved treasure to another pedophile.

Ephebophila and Moral Ambiguity in the Notion of the Paedophile as Tragic Victim

Director Adrian Lyne has made a specialty out of glossy and sensationalistic modern sexual morality plays with such hits as Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal. Although he continues this with Lolita, what he chooses to emphasize is the arguably ambiguous notion of the pedophile as a tragic victim, governed by desires he cannot control.

This does not excuse his monstrous and predatory destruction of childhood but merely contextualizes it in terms of a governing psychological weakness. At the very least, Irons has a conscience and is aware of his actions, battling his own guilt. In this respect Langella represents the conscienceless Irons – the sinister inner monstrosity that exists within the pedophile. Where Langella is truly malevolent, Irons is pathetic and hopeless, genuinely believing that he can sexually love a child and have that child respond to him in similar terms. Yet he also fears the child’s move to equality and even greater power in the relationship for it exposes his vulnerable dependence. Thus Lyne equally stresses Swain as an adolescent experimenting with her own sexuality and awakening: the tragedy of her situation is that her seeming need for sexual power and the absence of a father figure lead to her attraction to older men. The moral ambiguity in the film stems both from the sympathetic Irons’ responsibility and from the fact that Swain is not a helpless innocent but a girl in transition to womanhood.

KISSING SCENE

EXTRACT

There is a doomed pathos to Irons in Lyne’s version of the tale, much more so than there was for the smug James Mason in Kubrick’s account. The humor here corresponding avoids the cynical irony of Kubrick and the film is capable of a greater emotional connection with the characters.

Thus, for Lyne, the tale is closer to tragedy than comedy: hence his insistence on showing the event in Irons’ life that has since governed his romantic and sexual longings. The film arguably considers his pedophilia a kind of tragic flaw although it is an affliction that gives rise to total monstrousness if left unchecked by conscience. At least Irons in his own way believes that he is moved by love, a factor that Langella has apparently long transcended in his descent into perversion and can exploit in order to steal away Swain as she in turn may be lured by the malevolence. Swain is clearly using Irons to some extent and the ambiguous nature of their struggle makes for a tense uneasiness and moral uncertainty as pedophilia becomes ephebophilia. Swain enjoys her erotic discoveries yet Irons cannot deal with her growing independence and her increasing control over him: he thus tries to overcompensate as if intent to forever preserve her as the innocent he once loved / deflowered. Hence, she remains an idealized figure rather than a person, the film exploring a mix of pedophilic love, erotic fixation and dehumanization.

The widescreen letterbox transfer approaches the exquisite, with only some minor clarity problems with background definition. The cold, elegant and stylish sophistication typical of Lyne is amply evident.

With a fine bleached flashback sequence, the film is clever (and ambiguous) in its subtle erotification of a young woman, encouraging the viewer to perceive Swain as Irons sees her, recalling the less emphatic eroticism in Lyne’s debut Foxes. It is ornate and richly detailed in look and texture, almost icily attractive as an aesthetic exercise reliant on its manipulation of point of view to reveal the odd flirtatious interplay between the protagonists. This approach allows for empathy with Irons’ hopeless sexuality and for greater identification with the tragic repercussions of moral transgression, a frequent Lyne theme. There is a qualified happiness in the depiction of adolescent eroticism as there is always the sense that Irons is a monster, no matter what his justifications or tenderness may imply to himself. Soft focus is used delicately and Irons’ guilty paranoia is conveyed in his increasing instability. Costume is often used ironically, as when Langella first appears in white but remains a Mephistophelian figure forever in shadows, half-seen until the end. The sense of a fleeing soul is captured in the journey through an ever-changing American landscape as Irons grows ever closer to despair and damnation.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound transfer is equally delicate and remarkable, preserving the finely nuanced mix of this exceptional aesthetic experience: a vibrant and engrossing mix capable of crisply rendering the softer moments as well as the emphatic ones.

The emotive score by Ennio Morricone is preserved perfectly and is indeed a major factor in the film’s reflective and gloomily melancholic mood (it has been compared to his work in Once Upon a Time in America). Voices and small details are well placed spatially and there are numerous directional effects that convey the greater off-screen spaces as they in turn are compacted into more intimate scenes. Subtle background sounds give way to scenes between adult and child in a state of sexual tension. The use of voice-over emphasizes Irons’ hopelessness and his romantic view of his own perverse desires. It is a provocatively subjective account of a pedophile’s obsessive state of mind. His innate gentleness and decency nicely undercuts the notion of the pedophile as monster. Likewise his final monotone suggests the emotion and life drained from him by his experiences. The accumulation of small aural details adds tremendous texture to a delicate mix in a transfer of outstanding clarity. Slightly dreamlike, hallucinatory moments are well keyed to Irons’ gradual psychological disintegration at the fear of losing his idealized child woman.

There are numerous special features, which in combination with a stunning transfer make this surprisingly low-priced DVD an ideal collector’s piece.

There is an original trailer, as well as brief talent biographies (but not filmographies) and much extra footage in the form of deleted scenes elaborating on the central character relationship. The visual and aural quality of these deleted scenes, however, is of a decidedly lesser standard than the feature. Also included are videotaped screen tests with Swain and Irons, with comparisons to the same scenes as they appear in the final film. There are also extracts of script pages from the final shooting script. An informative featurette has information about Lyne’s involvement in a film he succinctly describes as a “strange and awful love story”. He talks of how the film is also about a young girl’s experiments with her own sexual power over men and how Langella represents that side of Irons which is unforgivable and irredeemable. He admits that the subject of pedophilia is the last taboo in cinema. Many of these points are elaborated on in an informative commentary track. It is evident that the DVD release has been assembled carefully in order to place the divisive film within a proper social, personal and cultural context. As such, it proves DVD to be a responsible means for the dissemination of an unpopular but often acclaimed movie dealing in contentious issues.

In the informative commentary track, director Lyne discusses the film’s flashback structure and the importance of showing audiences that incident in Irons’ childhood that shaped his subsequent desires.

Lyne discusses his preference for authenticity and location work where possible, the importance of close-ups for added tactility and of the mix of the childish and the adult in Swain’s performance. He talks much about his own stylistic and aesthetic choices in making the film, his use of props to enhance scenes, his tendency to use match cuts to suggest the link between Swain and Langella, the finesse of the art direction and the different approaches to the Langella character, Clare Quilty, in the novel and in Kubrick’s film version (wherein he is played by Peter Sellers in a much more expanded role). Lyne also stresses the mix of the responsibilities of lover and father as unique to the pedophilic relationship and contributing to the conflicting emotions in Irons. He mentions those scenes where a body double was used for Swain and talks of the fluidity in Morricone’s score. He admits that he intended the film to be disturbing in that it makes the viewer care for Irons even though he is arguably a monster. He also talks of the “insanity” in the final confrontation scene and the importance of children’s voices in the final mix. Lyne has previously proven himself an adroit commentator, and this release is thankfully no exception.

AMAZON.COM DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: Lolita
AMAZON.CO.UK DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: Lolita [DVD] [1998]

Adrian Lyne's Lolita subject to Australian Wowser Tribulations:
The Aussie Move to Ban Lolita.. see