LOLITA (1998)

Cast

Plot

A remake of Stanley Kubrick's deeply controversial 1962 film was always going to be tricky, but director Adrian Lyne has actually exercised remarkable restraint, given that his previous work includes "Fatal Attraction" and "Nine and a half Weeks". Jeremy Irons puts in a beautifully tortured performance as forty-something Humbert Humbert, while Melanie Griffith is touchingly, unsuspectingly vulnerable as the blowsy widow he marries, purely to be close to her prepubescent daughter. Two factors, however, make this potentially even more uncomfortable viewing than the original. One is the explanation for Humbert's obsession, - a childhood love affair that ended in tragedy and from which he has never recovered - offering the audience an invitation to empathise, if not sympathise, with him. And while the original Lolita resembled a miniature Brigitte Bardot, the undoubtedly talented Dominique Swain plays her here as the archetypal schoolgirl, complete with pigtails and dental brace. Too well made to be dismissed as titillation, but it's debatable whether a melodrama about a paedophile is any easier to stomach now than it was 37 years ago.