MovieLine |
With major U.S. film distributors declining to distribute Adrian Lyne's "Lolita," it began to look as if Americans would have to hop a plane to Paris to see the new R-rated version of Vladimir Nabokov's classic. Hollywood studios didn't want to pay more than a pittance for a film featuring pedophilia. But in the home country of Chargeurs, the French company that financed the $63 million movie, surely things would be different. Don't buy your airline tickets just yet. Child sexual-molestation cases in Belgium and France have scandalized Europeans, sending them to the street to call attention to the issue. "Chargeurs is afraid of their own movie now," says one Hollywood source. After announcing that "Lolita" would open across Europe this fall, Chargeurs has delayed the release in the countries where its own subsidiaries would distribute it. The film is set to premiere in Italy on Sept. 26, with stars Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain attending. It will open in Spain a week later. But not until 1998 is Chargeurs tackling the rest of Europe. The film's publicist, Ronni Chasen, says the delay is simply due to the crowded European film market. Chargeurs hopes, she adds, that positive word of mouth from Europe will change American minds. "I think it will be released in this country. I think it's very bizarre that this film is considered too hot to handle today and it wasn't too hot to handle in 1962 [when Stanley Kubrick made his "Lolita"]." Whether the movie is too hot - or not so hot - will be clearer once audiences finally see it. |
Text Vicki Jo Radovsky