Stars: Jeremy Irons, Melanie Griffith, Frank Langella, Dominique Swain, Suzanne Shepherd

Director: Adrian Lyne

Summary: A schoolteacher marries his landlady so that he can be closer to her daughter, who reminds him of a time in childhood when he was thirteen and in love with a twelve year old girl staying at his father's hotel. Adapated from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov.

Lyne (FATAL ATTRACTION) tries his hand at a more faithful adaptation of Nabokov's novel than Kubrick was allowed to attempt in 1962. In the process, Irons gives an amazing, tortured performance as Humbert Humbert, the professor who can not control his physical desires for 12 year-old Dolores Haze (Swain). Swain also turns in an exceptional performance as the title character. Controversy surrounded the production to the point where it languished, completed, on the shelf, for almost 2 years looking for an American distributor. The film had a successful European run before making its American debut on the Showtime cable network, and finally, to a limited art house run.

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Stanley Kubrick's 1961 version of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's notorious 1953 novel, prompted a scandal in its day: even to address the issue of paedophilia on screen was deemed to be as perverted as the hapless protagonist Humbert Humbert. James Mason plays Humbert, the suave English Professor whose gentlemanly exterior peels away as quickly as his scruples once exposed to Sue Lyons' well-developed teenage beauty. In order to be close to her, he marries her mother, the lonely and pathetically pretentious Charlotte (Shelley Winters) only for her to expire conveniently, leaving Humbert free to embark on a motel-to-motel trek across America with Lolita in tow, evading suspicions that theirs is more than a father-daughter relationship. Peter Sellers, meanwhile, gives a Dr Strangelove-type tour de forceperformance as Clare Quilty, a TV writer also in pursuit of Lolita, who harasses Humbert under several guises, including a psychiatrist.

As a movie, Lolitais flawed, albeit interestingly so. The sexual innuendo (a summer camp called Camp Climax, for example) seems jarring and pointless, while Sellers' comic turn detracts from any sense of guilt, tension or tragedy. It's as if the real purpose of the film is to offer a sort of silent, mocking laughter at the wretched Humbert and systematically divest him of his dignity. By the end, he is a babbling wretch while Sue Lyons' Lolita is pragmatic and self-possessed. It's Mason and Lyons' performances, which lift the film from its mess of structural difficulties. Decades on, their central relationship still makes for pitifully compulsive viewing.

On the DVD:Few extras, sadly, though the brief original trailer is excellent, built around the question, "How could they make a film out of Lolita?". The original black and white picture and mono sound are excellent. --David Stubbs

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Audio Commentary - 1. Adrian Lyne - Director, Bonus Footage - 1. Casting Session with Jeremy Irons, 2. Never Before Seen Footage, Featurette, Trailer - 1. Original Theatrical Trailer, Interactive Menus, Scene Access, Biographies
Year:	1997
Release Date:	May 8, 2000
Runtime:	132 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P 8877 D V D
Keywords:	General, Closed, Wide, Screen, Drama, Lolita, Captioned
Genre:	Drama