Jeremy Irons - a bad casting error - plays Humbert Humbert, a professor who moves to New England to take up a teaching post and finds himself lodger in the chaotic household of Charlotte Hayes (Griffith). Immediately, he falls hopelessly in love with her fourteen year old daughter Lolita (Swain), and when her mother dies in an accident, he gets his chance to move in on her. The film begins with Humbert in his car, blood on his hands, dazed and totally irrational, and then proceeds to track his progress from a respectable teacher to a near-psychotic murderer. It's a well planned screenplay in fact, rationalising some of the original's plot and sensibly revealing less of the plot at the start than Kubrick did.

The problem with the film is, however, a major one. In the book, Humbert is an unsympathetic man who delights in his paedophile nature and writes lengthy passages about the erotic joy he gets from having sex with underage girls. His saving grace is that he's not as unpleasant as the other major male character, serial paedophile Claire Quilty, whose shadowy presence suggests that he may just be a figment of Humbert's imagination. In the film, however, Irons makes Humbert into another one of his tortured victims, seized by an uncontrollable urge rather than clear-sightedly doing illegal things that he finds sexually exciting. In the book, Humbert reaches a moment of epiphany when he hears children singing and realises that "the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice amongst theirs". This moment gives him a certain redemption. The same scene in the film has no weight, because we've been encouraged to feel sorry for Humbert from the start, and Irons gives it lots of the suffering artist in the close-ups. Kevin Spacey would have made a good choice for Humbert, or even Christopher Walken or James Woods. Irons is a disaster and he virtually wrecks the film.

The book makes it clear that the whole sordid affair is only romantic in Humbert's own mind, but the film presents each scene between Lolita and Humbert as being poignantly romantic, with lots of soft-focus camerawork and the sort of misty haze that suggests Lyne would be happier making a commercial for Cadbury's Flake. Take the first kiss between them. It's presented as a moment of erotic joy, suggesting that we're seeing this through Humbert's point of view. But then the perspective shifts to suggest we aren't seeing things from his angle. It's all very, very confused.

The other problem is the absence of the black comedy which makes the book so enjoyable to read. Kubrick managed this beautifully, but Lyne usually fumbles it, seemingly keen to make a love story rather than a horrible cautionary tale. Only the scene at Lolita's school, when Humbert is asked by the headmistress to "instruct your daughter in the process of human reproduction" creates a flash of the wicked humour of the original. Too much weight is placed on the opening flashback which attempts to blame Humbert's paedophilia on a childhood romance with a girl who died of Typhus - but it's presented as fact rather than Humbert's romanticised justification which may or may not be true. The character of Quilty is made more menacing and ambiguous than Peter Sellers suggested in the Kubrick version, but the vital ingredient of charm is missing. Frank Langella is a good actor, but his Quilty is just a rather repulsive predator, all on one grim note.

Needless to say, the controversy over the film - manufactured largely by Christopher Tookey of the Daily Mail - is all total nonsense. This is a serious adult film of a well-regarded novel and there is nothing remotely exploitative in the whole 132 minutes. Indeed, a bit of tasteless sleaze might have enlivened the film. The whole movie is actually done in a self-consciously "tasteful" fashion, as if keen to avoid accusations of glorifying child molestation. Even then, no studio in the US would touch it with a bargepole, despite the fact that there's no significant nudity or explicit sex. Apparently, Dominique Swain and Jeremy Irons were always separated with a cushion when they simulated sex, and Swain's mother was always on set to check everything was above board. The end result is like Henry Miller shot by Merchant-Ivory, and the tasteful restraint, while admirable, leads to the film losing any real vitality, as the pace slows to a crawl after the first hour. There are effective moments certainly - the first sight of Lolita is a wonderful image, and the scene where Humbert meets her again after several months is also very touching. But the final confrontation between Humbert and Quilty is badly fumbled and lacking in any menace.

My only unqualified rave is reserved for Ennio Morricone's score, which is his best work for a very long time, with the trademark dissonance of his recent work cropping up in the main theme which is then transformed into a rapturous love theme when we first see Lolita. I was quite impressed by Howard Atherton's cinematography in places, but it does look at times as though he's smeared the camera lens with vaseline in order to suggest that the film is taking place in the past.

Kubrick's film of "Lolita" was less faithful to the novel than Lyne's effort, but it is both more cinematically exciting and more reminiscent of the tone of the original novel. Transcribing a novel slavishly onto film is not always the best way to approach an adaptation, especially when you miss the tone as completely as this does.

The Disc

Pathe have put a lot of effort into this disc, some of it confounded by the BBFC. However, it's hard to fault this release.

The picture quality is excellent. There is an overtly soft appearance to many scenes, but that is due to the cinematography rather than any fault on the disc. There are no artifacts and the picture is free of noise and grain. It is transferred at 1.85:1 and not 2.35:1 as claimed on the sleeve, and the image is anamorphically enhanced.

The sound is not stunning, but this is not the sort of film that wows you with the soundtrack. The 5.1 mix is subtle and effective, with the music very much to the fore. Dialogue is spatially placed and some of the ambient sounds are very effective.

The bonus materials are impressive. We get 9 deleted scenes, most of them surplus to requirements. The decision to cut them was right in every case, in my opinion, although the "Quilty's Kitchen" scene is effective. There were going to be 2 more scenes included, but the BBFC refused to pass them as they contained explicit nudity from Dominique Swain which was considered unnecessary and inappropriate given that she was 15 when she made the film.

Adrian Lyne contributes a commentary which is thoughtful but slow and generally unenlightening. He seems a little reticent and defensive, only talking when he wants to make a particular point. Some interesting material about casting and locations, but this is not a commentary which is much fun to listen to. He keeps talking about the relation of the film to the novel, as if repeating events verbatim was the only thing he had to do in making a film of it.

The casting session on the disc between Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain is fascinating, since their chemistry is evident from the first, and Irons actually seems more effective here than he is in the film.

The featurette only lasts nine minutes and has little of interest, being the usual promotional drivel.

The trailer is included - very serious this - and there are a reasonable 30 chapter stops. The menus are static, but are visually striking and backed with Morricone's gorgeous score.

I have major reservations about the film, but the disc is well put together and is another release from Pathe that shows the care they are willing to put into their discs.

Mike Sutton