When he moves from Europe to New England, he finds his new lodgings and, more than anything, his pushy landlady Charlotte Haze repulsive. But, in the garden, he discovers the 12-year-old daughter Lolita, and decides to stay with the Hazes. He is overjoyed when Charlotte proposes marriage to him. Although he despises the mother, he can, in this way, get closer to her daughter.

• Some films just mustn't be controversial - e.g., films which glorify incest and reverse the roles of culprit and victim. Lolita is one of those films which really sets alarm bells ringing. But while the editors of this magazine left the cinema foaming at the mouth, they realised that, on top of everything else, most of their colleagues had not even begun to think about it, and could not understand our anger. Indeed, the film is even considered progressive.

Ever since Vladimir Nabakov's novel of 1955, and at least since Stanley Kubrik's film version of 1962, the Lolita concept has been a slap in the face for all survivors, as it portrays seductive girls (and women), who lead dangerously stupid but allegedly upright men astray, finally ruining them. Since then more than a dozen Lolita-style productions have come out, including any amount of sex and blaxploitation movies.

This remake by Adrian Lyne has the same effect on victims of incest as a salvo of punches to the face, especially as it purports to be a serious film. While in Kubrick's version the culprit is shown to be a negative character who even thinks of murdering Charlotte only to be beaten to it by the car accident, the new protagonist - who is also the narrator - feels unjustly accused, and formulates the lies against which victims of sexual abuse have to fight - and is not sincere about his role as culprit. It is suggested that Lolita suffers, but in general the culprit feels he has done nothing wrong:

Humbert, and with him the whole film, assumes that there are 12-year-old nymphomaniacs. Three times in all the narrator indoctrinates his audience with this concept, even using words like "demonic" attached to it. With this lie, lie no. 1, victims (and the audience) are told to believe that they themselves have something wrong with them, that they provoked the abuse and that they are sluts. Humbert uses the word "nymphomaniac", which really refers to women with a high sexual appetite, before he can even point to any contact between Lolita and men. In her puberty she is a little coquettish and the fortysomething-year-old interprets this as devilish seduction, which provides him with an excuse to abuse his future stepdaughter.

The crowning glory of this effrontery is Humbert's attempt to justify himself to the "jury" - the audience - by complaining that as "daddy" he was not even Lolita's first sexual partner: for him, reason enough to abuse her.

Lie no. 2: Girls provoke, even actively seek, sexual contact by their clothes and behaviour. It matters not one bit what women and girls are wearing when a man wants to rape them - he just goes ahead. Anyhow, rape has little to do with sex, but more with violence. In the '62 version - probably due to the censors - Lolita is clothed quite normally. In 1997 the 12-year-old is dressed in questionable Basic Instinct style. Lolita shows her underwear, allows full view of her cleavage and, while wearing white, allows herself to be soaked by the sprinkler in the garden. In reality, of course, it is Humbert - or, rather, the British director's camera - which advances on Lolita.

Lie no. 3: The bad guys are perverted strangers, anything goes in one's own home. Firstly, children and youths are, in most cases, abused by close relatives at home, and secondly, these cases are often more traumatic, because they feel badly betrayed by someone they love and by whom they felt loved. In this film, then, we have the character of Clare Quilty, a male character created to divert attention away from the real culprit and belittle the crime of incest. The stranger does much worse things to children: he systematically exploits youths and children for sexual and commercial reasons, forces them to make porn movies and is, by and large, much more perverse. Daddy gets really annoyed, brings Quilty to book and even becomes a hero.

Lie no. 4: Gays are paedophiles. This is implied when Quilty tries to seduce Humbert, saying he not only likes girls, but also their fathers. The fact is that most abusers are heterosexual.

Lie no. 5: The culprit loves the girl. When the life of a minor is shaken to the foundations for such a prolonged period of time, this has nothing to do with love. He is interested only in power and his own interests, not the well-being of the girl. The romantic incidental music, when he meets his stepdaughter again after many years, is unbelievable.

Along with these nasty lies, other things about the film are simply unbelievable. Starting with the hysterical, screaming mother as a figure of hate for the oh-so-stressed-out men, the natural taking over of HER house by the nasty husband after the divorce, this continues with the warning to men not to get entangled with young girls (like moths to a light trap and in the school play starring Lolita as a witch who condemns hunters), and ends, not with the victim having nightmares and becoming alcoholic, but the culprit. And all because of her.

Lolita is not even good in a cinematic sense. Unlike the original, Lyne gives us repulsive braces on the teeth and lollipop fetishes, corresponding to the cheapest fantasies of the prostitution business. This makes one wonder as how others are capable of musing about just how well Dominique Swain does play the part of Lolita. What does this say about the critics and our society, when, to be "discovered", an actress has to endure intrusive cameras and the portrayal of such fantasies?

Were it not for the fact that it would bring this chauvinistic film more publicity than it deserves, we would rise from our desks and work out how best to protest. In this light, we would just advise you not to spend the next few months or more with the nasty taste this film leaves in the mouth after watching it.

Deutsche Version

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