Ok, in the movie Lolita, was the girl as young as the actress she played? Or was she just “young looking”? Am I evil if I think she was hot?
-Thanks in advance.
Grrr… That should of course be “as young as the character she played”…
No. According to http://www.imdb.com, Dominique Swain would have been 16 or 17 when the movie was filmed, which is a world of difference from the character’s age of 12. I haven’t seen the movie, but most reviewers comment on both the faithfulness to the Nabokov novel, and the explicit nature of some of the scenes. I would guess they would have had a difficult time making the movie with a more age-appropriate actress.
Unless of course he’s talking about the 1962 version, http://us.imdb.com/Title?0056193
with Sue Lyon.
If you think Sue Lyon was hot, you probably need more help than we can give you here at the Straight Dope. 
One of the reasons I assumed the OP was talking about the new one.
Sue Lyon was born in 1946, so she was 15 or 16 when she made the movie, also post-, rather than pre-pubescent. Probably also to allow for less controversy in shooting the subject matter.
If somebody had guts, they should have done the thing in 1997 with Amanda Bynes from Nickolodeon, who WOULD have been the right age, looked right for the role, and had established herself as a capable performer. Imagine the public controversy THAT might have generated. Her agent probably wouldn’t have let her touch it, anyway.
Wasn’t Brooke Shields pretty young when she made Taxi Driver? There weren’t any truly explicit scenes (as close as I remember was her dropping to her knees), but the subject matter must have caused a second thought or two.
Still, how is it a minor can be in a suggestive (or more, considering Lolita) movie?
Yeah, if Brooke Shields were actually in it, she would have been 10 or 11! Though, she wasn’t, but Jodie Foster was still pretty young. She was 14, though I don’t recall anything too explicit that she did in it.
Brooke Shields was 11 when Taxi Driver was made, but a more relevent piece of information might be that Jodie Foster was 13.
(Brooke Shields’ controversial performance at a young age was “Blue Lagoon”)
I’ve got to apologize, beatle. Looking back at my post, it might have come off as pretty sarcastic. Sorry about that.
Mine had about the same tone. Hard to resist being a wiseass in cases like this. Likewise, no insult intended.
Where was the movie Lolita shot, though?? If a man his age makes out with a 16 year old like that in Florida, he would be arrested. (Legal for a man my age though… woohooo!!) Anyway, were there any legal problems with his tongue being in the mouth of a minor.
Re: Brooke Shields – her role in “Blue Lagoon” was predated by her role in “Pretty Baby,” which was released when she was 13, and filmed when she was 12. Shields played the daughter of a prostitute in a whorehouse and appeared nude as she was auctioned off to the highest bidder. She also was in scenes of other people having sex. The movie was actually fairly well received (arguably her best), probably because it was directed by Louis Malle, who had the ability to make movies on edgy themes (incest, Nazi collaboration) and get away with it.
I think Brooke Shields’ controversial performance was Pretty Baby, but given how confusing this thread is, it could have been The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington for all I know.
One of the weird things about Lolita debates is that no one seems to have seen the movies. Which is guess tells you something. Even if you could find one at a video store (and maybe you can; I can’t find anything at a video store), there’s no guarantee it wouldn’t be edited. Which could create some humorous confusion: “Dude, I saw Deepthroat and it was totally tame. And pretty expensive for a 25-minute film.”
I found the “X-rated” version of Barbarella at a big video chain (Blockbuster or Hollywood, I don’t remember). I thought, “Now I’ll see what all the fuss is about! What did pass for an X rating in the 60s, anyway?” Then I found that it was only the box that was X-rated. The movie itself was PG. Hmm.
The point is, the Lolita movies were made, but they are under legal and moral sanction in some areas, as the novel is and was.
Was she actually there??? Or did they use camera angles and editting tricks to make it appear she was there. If she was actually there, that too would be illegal in Florida. It’s got to be illegal in Hollywood. Do they just make exceptions for thesbians?
My brain fart for the day. No offense taken, guys.
The two Chuck mentions are good examples (I knew I’d seen Brooke in something young and risque).
Ummm… it has been on cable a few times in the past couple months. (Not nearly as much as Superman 2, but enough for me to have watched it twice)
I’m talking about the new one though. You might be talking about the old one. Was there worse scenes in the old one? I dont think anything was that bad in the new one, except for the fact that the old bastard was making out with a 16 year old.
Okay, well I’m partly full of crap then. I’d have thought the subject matter alone would be enough to keep it off cable.
On the other hand, are you sure it’s an unexpurgated version that’s making it onto cable? I heard of a seen in the new one where Lolita pulls her retainer out of her mouth before doing something very intimate to Humbert. Obviously there needn’t be any nudity for there to be sex (and I think that is way beyond “suggestive”, but I realize that word has a vague definition).
As to the older one, yes, I think there are some racier seens in it. Kubrick seems to have liked making sexual movies. <- understatement Again, “racey” is in the eye of the beholder. If every film which is child pornography which merely admits the existance of sex between an over-18 and an under-18, then hooooee that’s a lot of banned movies.
All I’m saying is, we aren’t going to know why people get freaked out about Kubrick’s Lolita unless they discuss in plain language all sorts of things that make people squeamish to talk about in plain language.
Does an under-18 actress appear on screen in a state of undress which would get her arrested if it were in public?
Is she portraying an under-18 character and in similar states of undress?
Did she engage in actual sex acts (not counting kissing or anything else that straight French guys do to each other; getting felt up, various intercourse acts, etc. would count) on-screen?
If the answer to these questions is no, then I guess that means it’s just the subject matter which offends people. I can relate to being offended by it, but I can also see why the courts would be reluctant to treat it as illegal. If somebody makes a documentary of interviews with sex abuse survivors, they’re going to deal in exactly the same subject matter. You wanna ban them too? That is why most child pornography standards try to be objective and deal with stuff like on-screen nudity, rather than whether a film tries to be erotic or not.
(If the answer to the above questions is yes, then I too am wondering how Kubrick got away with it. I’m not going to rush down to the raciest video store in town to find out, though.)
IIRC, Maxim said Dominique Swain was 15 during the making of Lolita, but she was 18 at the time of the issue, which is almost a year old now, so I’d imagine she’s 19 now.
The seen in the bedroom where she takes out her retainer was in the new one. They just showed her take it out, smile, and then go down. They really didnt show anything else. Was there more?
And what I am so curious about, is not what was ‘suggested’ but what actually did occur. I think you just said this movie was filmed in France, so I guess that explains most of my Qs. But in the US (at least FL) just kissing a minor in the manner he did in the movie is a felony. I was not really bothered by the movie at all. Maybe a little jealous is all. I was just curious how they could get away with those things.
Dominique Swain is 20 (b. 12/8/1980) The movie started production in 1995, IIRC, so she was 15 when it was made, 17 when it was released in the U.S.