October 1–8, 1998

movie shorts

Lolita

Attended by much ballyhoo and bellyaching, Adrian Lyne's untouchable adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel finally comes to the big screen, where it looks pretty and not much else. Unable to find any equivalent for the novel's deliciously ambiguous tone, the film shows Lolita (Dominique Swain) as an unrepentant seductress who takes on a baffled, worried-looking Humbert (Jeremy Irons). Swain, whose performance is easily the film's best aspect, deliciously incarnates Lolita's prodigal libido, but Irons can't seem to muster an ounce of sexual energy; he's about as erotic as a toasted crumpet. Lyne—known for such high-grade sleaze as Indecent Proposal and 9 1/2 Weeks—takes to "serious" filmmaking with the zest of the newly converted, but his staid, picturesque style is hardly an analogue for Nabokov's dizzying prose—and surely the last thing Nabokov intended was for Lolita to be tasteful. Melanie Griffith, who always seems miscast but even more so here, and Frank Langella round out the quartet of characters.

—Sam Adams