Lolita

Let’s get the big elephant in the room out of the way first: no film adaptation will ever be as good as the novel Lolita. The first half hour, give or take, does come close to matching the seductive, sumptuous, comic and doomed narrative of the novel. And shortly thereafter, Adrian Lyne decides he wants to stop making a luscious and vivid adaptation and make an overly stylized intriguing mess of a film instead. It’s not Jeremy Irons’ fault, he seems expertly cast as Humbert. Something about his posh, clipped tones and deep rumbles in his voice suite the character. His hollow eyed gloom also works wonders. And he’s made a career out of playing sexual creeps. And Dominique Swain is decent enough as Dolores Haze, a.k.a. Lolita. She’s precocious and tomboyish enough to fit the bratty contours of the character, and was a pretty enough child actress yet something is still wrong about her. Perhaps it’s that she was closer to fifteen when the film was made, and dangerously close to being out of nymphet range. Something about her seems too old and world-weary. Their relationship is a good symbol for what is wrong with the movie. Irons representing the surface perfection involved and Swain how everything is slightly off despite being so expertly realized, or maybe Lolita is one of those books that is just not filmable. Heaven forbid anyone should pick up the novel.