"A strange and awful love story"
The 1997 film version by
Adrian Lyne is really really pretty and I love the cinematic focus. I love the 50’s
road trip images and the summertime kitschy music and the garden Lo lay in, being sprinkled with water whilst turning pages in a book filled with full page glossy pictures of
Elvis and
Marilyn Monroe.
I found Jeremy Irons’ interpretation of Humbert Humbert to be really creepy, but really creepily sweet. The most chilling parts of the movie were when it would be silent in the morning and then Delores would suddenly start kissing this old man, adolescently and tongue-ingly. The wrongest part was when Delores took out her dental plate before going down on him. The saddest part was when, on a humid day in a beachside motel, Delores sat on Humbert’s lap reading a comic which went translucent in the light which streamed in from the window.. she was giggling at this childish comic book indulgence, and then Humbert pulls her on to him and she starts lightly groaning, orgasming, distracted from her kiddie time.
I watched this film with two boys and they ended up disgusted with themselves, never being able to decide if they found Delores childish and repulsive, or damn sexual. They started questioning their carnal nature. Even I found Delores sexy, and I’m a girl. (this makes me guilty of not only imaginative paedophilia, but also bisexuality).
Kubrick's version of Lolita was a “cool, ironic, droll piece of work” (www.mg.co.za) that didn't focus so much on the sexual aspects of the novel but more on the mystery, with the ‘baddie’, Quilty, taking up far more screen time than his presence in the book. Another interesting point is that Nabokov helped Kubrick to write his screenplay.*
It is uncertain whether Nabokov's original story of Lolita is merely a joke on middle class America or whether it is about obsession, or love, or lust. It took Nabokov seven years to write what he referred to as "a short novel about a man who liked little girls". It was rejected as pornography by American publishers and was finally published in Paris by Olympia Press. After a spate of gleaming reviews it was eventually published in the United States. Vanity Fair called it “the only convincing love story of our century".
Thanks to GangstaFeelsGood for that little tidbit :)