Lolita (1997)
ロリータ
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Nabokov's monster with a soundtrack of sympathy; no US distributor would touch it for a year.
In 1947 Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged professor from Europe, arrives in New England to take up a teaching post. As a boy of fourteen in Cannes he loved a girl, Annabel, who died, and ever since he has been fixed on girls of about that age. Looking for lodgings in the town of Ramsdale, he is shown round the house of a widow, Charlotte Haze, sees her fourteen-year-old daughter, Dolores, and takes the room. He calls the girl Lolita, and he marries Charlotte only to stay near her.
While Lolita is away at summer camp, Charlotte reads Humbert's diary and discovers what he wants. She tells him she is leaving and that he will never see her daughter again, runs out of the house, and is hit by a car and killed. Humbert collects Lolita from camp and, as her guardian, takes her on the road, moving from motel to motel. He begins to sexually abuse her, and presents her to the world as his daughter.
For a while they settle in the college town of Beardsley, where he teaches and she attends a girls' school. She grows bored and restless, and the rows between them get worse. A playwright, Clare Quilty, has been following them since the start of their travels. When they take to the road again, Lolita escapes with him, and Humbert, who does not know Quilty's name, cannot find them.
Three years later a letter arrives asking for money. Lolita is married, pregnant and poor, and her husband, Richard, knows nothing of her past. She refuses to go away with Humbert, and he gives her the money. She tells him that Quilty preyed on young girls for child pornography, and threw her out when she refused to take part. Humbert tracks Quilty down and kills him. He is arrested, and in November 1950 he dies in prison of a coronary thrombosis. Lolita dies the following month, on Christmas Day, in childbirth.
Starring
Jeremy Ironsas Humbert Humbert
A European professor fixated on young girls since his first love died, who marries a widow to get close to her daughter.
Humbert Humbert’s story
Humbert, still haunted by Annabel, the girl he loved at fourteen, takes a room in Ramsdale because of Charlotte Haze's fourteen-year-old daughter, Dolores, whom he calls Lolita. When Charlotte reads his diary and is killed running from the house, he collects the girl from summer camp, keeps her mother's death from her at first, and drives her from motel to motel, sexually abusing her while passing her off as his daughter. Settled in Beardsley, he watches her more and more closely as she grows restless and the rows get worse, and the playwright Quilty takes her from him. Three years later he finds her married, pregnant and poor, begs her to leave with him, and gives her the money when she refuses. He tracks Quilty down and kills him, and dies in prison of a coronary thrombosis in November 1950.
Dominique Swainas Dolores "Lolita" Haze
Charlotte's fourteen-year-old daughter, whom Humbert abuses after her mother's death while posing as her father.
Dolores "Lolita" Haze’s story
Dolores Haze is fourteen and lives in Ramsdale with her widowed mother, Charlotte; the lodger her mother marries calls her Lolita. While she is at summer camp, her mother is killed. Humbert collects her, hides the death from her at first, and takes her on the road, sexually abusing her from motel to motel while the world takes them for father and daughter. In Beardsley she grows restless and wants her independence. Falling ill on the road again, she slips out of the hospital with Quilty, the playwright who has trailed them. Three years later, married to Richard, pregnant and poor, she writes to Humbert for money and will not go with him. Quilty, she tells him, threw her out when she refused to take part in his child pornography. She dies in childbirth on Christmas Day.
Melanie Griffithas Charlotte Haze
A lonely widow who takes Humbert in as a lodger and marries him, until she reads his diary.
Frank Langellaas Clare Quilty
A playwright who trails Humbert and Lolita across the country and takes her away, a predator himself.
Why it matters
Lolita is the story of a man who sexually abuses a child, told in his own voice, and the whole difficulty of the film lies there. Humbert's narration is lyrical, and Adrian Lyne lets him be sad and even sympathetic while showing what he does; some critics praised that fidelity to Nabokov, others felt it softened the novel's cruelty into romance. American distributors would not take the film, and it reached the United States first on the cable channel Showtime in 1998, almost a year after its festival premiere. In Australia, politicians campaigned to ban it, and the chief censor defended its R rating, saying it dealt with paedophilia without glorifying or condoning it. In Japan the girl's nickname lives on in the coinage 'Lolita complex', shortened to lolicon. The film leaves the hardest question in front of its audience: how easily a beautiful voice can make abuse sound like love.