Lolita (1997)
Directed by Adrian Lyne
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.
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What critics compared Lolita to
Mortensen gives Ben's authoritarian bent shadings of softness, openness, especially when he encourages his kids to think their thoughts through (forcing his daughter to go deeper in her literary analysis of Lolita is a nice little scene).
But one can also commiserate when he’s hurt by a verbal assault from one of the kids, and respect him when he apologizes to his brother for failing to abide by his house rules, or coaxes an intelligent response to Nabokov’s “Lolita” from one of his daughters who’s decided to jump ahead on her required reading list, or says a fond farewell to a son who’s chosen to leave the nest.
Ben’s daughter analyzing Lolita—“I hate him but I also feel sorry for him, he loves her so much”—seems to address Ben’s questionable parenting, as does a guardianship showdown with his in-laws.
He offers Lillian a place to stay, in a home decorated almost entirely with figurative red flags, and while his name might be Lawrence, the famous banned book he most evokes is not Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” but Nabakov’s “Lolita.” Like Nabakov himself, the character has a keen interest in lepidoptery, and like Nabakov’s notorious antihero Humbert Humbert, he is queasily obsessed with Annabel Leigh/Lee, Humbert’s first obsession in “Lolita,” named for Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem, of which Lawrence is also a big fan. When Lillian tells Lawrence that her name is Annabel, he can barely conceal his excitement.
By then, however, some will have become so entranced by the captivating images, the visual and musical metaphors, and the sensual interludes alluding to Nabokov’s Lolita (as directed by Adrian Lyne in 1996), that the fact that much of Stoker does not add up may go unnoticed.
Dominique Swain, Adrian Lyne's Lolita of yesteryear, is just as unbearably over-the-top, but with rather less intimation that she's "going for" a "take" on her non-character that isn't panning out.
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Think of "Peyton Place," "Lolita," "From Here to Eternity" and "Forever Amber."
Meanwhile, the dirty old man who filmed Lolita back in 1962, Stanley Kubrick , is about to come out of cold storage himself with Eyes Wide Shut, his first movie in a decade--a somewhat momentous event that seems to have occasioned a newly struck print of his Lolita (playing at Oak Street for two weeks).
But the "Lolita" that Vladimir Nabokov wrote as a novel and the "Lolita" he wrote to be a film, directed by Stanley Kubrick, are two conspicuously different things.
Also, “Deep Water” marks a return to sexy noir material for Adrian Lyne, who directed “9 ½ Weeks,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Indecent Proposal,” “Lolita” and “Unfaithful” but hasn’t made a film in 20 years.
Based on the Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name — about a husband and wife, the lovers she takes, and the fallout of a lie about murdering her last paramour — it is exactly the type of story that the filmmaker behind 9½ Weeks , Indecent Proposal and Lolita would be suited to.
British filmmaker Adrian Lyne made a name for himself in the ’80s and ’90s thanks to lurid thrillers (“Fatal Attraction,” “Indecent Proposal,” “Lolita”) that put the “sexually” in “sexually-charged” and “sexual taboo.”
Then he unleashed a string of hits where women were either docile objects or vile harpies: 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, Lolita, Unfaithful.
(He also made the 1997 version of Lolita that, quite frankly, I never had the guts to watch.
9 1/2 Weeks (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987), Indecent Proposal (1993), Lolita (1997), and Unfaithful (2002) are some of the genre’s most memorable entries leading Lyne’s directorial career to become synonymous with all things sexy, stylish, and erotically charged.
I've even supported filmmakers who have done this in the past (Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers and Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights come instantly to mind) and will continue to do so in the future.
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How likely is it that a travel writer is going to have the opportunity to interview a world famous actress like Nicole Oliver (Melanie Griffith, Lolita ), and then get a blow job from her? Likeliness doesn't matter -- this is Allen's adolescent fantasy.
The words “Directed by Adrian Lyne” are rarely greeted with a sense of excitement these days and are most likely to induce thoughts of glossy 1980s shag-fests such as Nine ½ Weeks and Fatal Attraction, or, failing that, his ill-advised remake of Lolita.
Sex for Lyne is a Fatal Attraction, a Flashdance, an Indecent Proposal, or it's a fevered episode that occurs in 9 1/2 Weeks or with a nymphet named Lolita.
Director Adrian Lyne certainly has proven to be an ambitious explorer of sexuality in his films 9 1/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction, and Lolita.
Ten years ago, Lyne might have junked this movie up he way he did 9 1/2 Weeks and Indecent Proposal, but he has become a more subtle director since even 1997's Lolita.
Lyne, the veteran of "Fatal Attraction," "91/2 Weeks," "Indecent Proposal" and "Lolita," is one of the movies' last moralists, an expert at using taste and decorum to elevate soap opera material.
For 45 minutes or so, as the lovers meet and sly, brazen Paul pushes the risks of exposure, the movie rivals the lust luster of Lyne's "Fatal Attraction," "91/2 Weeks," "Indecent Proposal," if not the humid richness of his "Lolita," which rivals the Kubrick version.