Lyne's `Lolita': Exceeding Expectations

Movie review XXX "Lolita," with Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, Melanie Griffith, Frank Langella. Directed by Adrian Lyne, from a script by Stephen Schiff. 137 minutes. Egyptian. "R" - Restricted because of aberrant sexuality, a strong scene of violence, nudity and some language.

Adrian Lyne's long-delayed $56 million version of the Vladimir Nabokov novel isn't as funny or as entertaining as Stanley Kubrick's frequently maligned 1962 adaptation, though it comes closer to the book in many ways.

Dominique Swain seems more sexually precocious than Sue Lyon in the 1962 version. An ordinary, semi-conscious girl one moment, a teasing sexpot the next, Swain suggests a child-woman who knows just how to manipulate and provoke her infatuated new stepfather, Humbert Humbert. Lyon was restricted by censorship codes of the times, of course, and Swain was clearly guided by the new film's director, Adrian Lyne, to bring more sexual precociousness to the role.

But the split-personality nature of Lolita appears to be her own contribution. She's a brave actress, willing to be bratty and ugly at times - as Lolita must be if she is to be recognized as a not-altogether-worthy object of desire. Like Lyon, she was 15 when she played the role.

Jeremy Irons gives a striking performance as Humbert Humbert, equal to James Mason's work in the Kubrick version. Pauline Kael once wrote that Mason was, after a spotty Hollywood career, at long last "really in command of a comic style . . . better than (and different from) what almost anyone could have expected."

Irons also exceeds expectations, turning Humbert into a mixture of pathos and passion and sneaky triumph. He's particularly strong in the early scenes, as he settles into Lolita's home and tries to deal with all the attention he's getting from both her and her mother. It isn't his fault that Stephen Schiff's script eventually makes the character so pathetic, so wasted, that he's hard to watch.

Alas, Melanie Griffith is a poor substitute for Shelley Winters' hilarious culture-vulture mother in Kubrick's version, and Frank Langella replaces Peter Sellers' nimble, shifty Clare Quilty with witless hysteria. Admittedly, he doesn't have as much screen time as Sellers, who more or less took over Kubrick's movie, which some suggested should be retitled "Quilty."

Lyne's "Lolita" was shown on cable a few weeks ago, but that's no way to appreciate Howard Atherton's handsome cinematography or Jon Hutman's resourceful production design, which restores the story to its late-1940s setting (Kubrick placed it in the 1950s). On television, the period detail and several of Lyne's subtler touches were barely visible.

Kael called Kubrick's "Lolita" "the first new American comedy since those great days in the 1940s when Preston Sturges re-created comedy with verbal slapstick." Which one will we still be watching in the next century? Maybe both; Lyne's version is certainly honorable. But my guess is Kubrick's will seem more enticing.