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Given that director Adrian Lyne, with previous
films like "Fatal Attraction", "Indecent
Proposal" and the salacious yuppie/whore fantasies in
"9 1/2 Weeks", has probably done more inherent damage
to popular American sexual mores than anyone I can think of right
off, all the dreary and predictable flap over his rather similar
production of "Lolita" seems like much ado about not
much, really. Good thing for him that American viewers rarely
resist the curiosity pull of controversy, no matter how
fabricated, as this film doesn't have much going for it on its
own merits. Any successful film adaptation of Nabokov is probably
impossible and not worth discussing in depth, but comparisons
between this production and the misfired Kubrick translation are
just as inevitable. While this film doesn't improve on the
previous film's failings much, it does serve as a kind of
antithesis; where Kubrick gravitated towards the comedic Lyne
portentiously slavers over the morose and tragic. In fact, Lyne's
handling is so stately, careful and stultifyingly safe that some
of Kubrick's mistakes seem almost necessary...at least his film
had some semblance of energy. Dominique Swain in the title role
does what she can to inject some vital complexity into the film
and succeeds at points, but the film, perhaps intimated by
itself, ultimately reduces her to a simple victim (a questionable
tack considering the source). Jeremy Irons as Humbert (Irons
seems to be getting some practice in this kind of
role..."Stealing Beauty", anyone?) surprisingly conveys
withered resignation rather than the wracked desperation one
might expect, while Melanie Griffith can't seem to decide whether
Charlotte Haze is a drag-queen fond of Nabokov or a drag-queen
with a serious drug problem. And then there's the Quilty Dilemma.
Peter Sellers in Kubrick's version was entertaining, but hugely
incongruous and overplayed. By contrast, Frank Langella here is a
one-note malevolent cipher whose scenes are equally incongruous
with the elegiac tone the rest of the film attempts (mostly
encouraged by Ennio Morricone's customary florid score)...one is
lit by an absurdly powerful bug-zapper, the other a frenzy of
gore, flopping genitals and incomprehensible editing (probably an
attempt to wake up the audience). Lyne gives other scenes
like-minded overkill (Humbert's increasing paranoia, for example,
is snatched from Irons and replaced by lens-shifting
hallucination sequences), but overall drains anything potentially
shocking or inherently ironic from his material, settling instead
for a two-dimensionally inoffensive, antiseptic and terminally
dull costume drama.
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