sang to her,
Irons faked sex
her. Lolita star
isAmerica's least ordinary teenager. 3.7:: Peter Ross
'SHE'S A TYPICAL high school girl.‘ says Dominique Swain. blue eyes flashing. ‘creative. rebellious. and trying to find out who she is.‘
Swain. the very epitome of the term ‘hot young actress‘. cottld be talking about a character she‘s playing in a teen soap. maybe some hotheaded kid in a Beverley Hills 902/0- style rites-of-passage show. But she’s not. She‘s describing Dolores Hale. the twelve-
'l was really a failure at going through the motions of sex. My hips were moving, but I
didn't know what I was doing.’ Dominique Swain
year-old ‘nymphet’ who exchanges handjobs for candy in Nabokov‘s novel and Adrian Lyne‘s movie. Lolita.
That film. shot in 1995 when Swain was fourteen. has made her notorious around the world. Yet. in her native L'nited States. you‘d be hard pressed to fill a burger joint with the people who‘ve seen it. Lolita is yet to find an American cinema distributor with the balls to back a film which Bible—thumping. right-wing
pressure groups are dying to sink their talons into. Hoping to reap the fruits of feverish public demand. however. the cable company Showtime has bought the rights to the $50 million movie and plans to screen it on TV in August. [Fncle Sam is setting his video.
Meanwhile. across the pond. Lolita is about to open. after being controversially passed uncut by the British Board of liilm Classification. which decreed that ‘adult
cinemagoers have a right to judge for themselves”.
This attitude is raising tabloid hackles. with the l)(lll_\‘ Mail snarling that ‘perverts will flock to this travesty'. Hacks are
getting hot under the collar because Lyne‘s movie is much more open about showing sex than Stanley Kubrick‘s l‘)()2 adaptation. although a body double was used for more explicit scenes.
Swain wasn‘t at all disturbed by having to fake the beast with two backs with co-star Jeremy Irons: she was just dismayed at having a lack of real-life experience to draw on.
‘I was really a failure at going through the
motions of sex.‘ she laughs. ‘.\ly hips were moving. but I didn‘t know what I was doing. so it didn‘t look realistic. They kept moving the camera back because I was just terrible! But Adrian said it actually added to the scenes. because Lolita wasn't supposed to be that experienced sexuallyf
Swain triumphed over 2500 other young hopefuls to land the role of Lolita in what was her first movie -— quite an entrance even by Hollywood standards »- but she’s not been resting on her controversial laurels since then. She plays a straight teen exploring Portland's
alternative rock scene in Girl. but is better
known as the punk-turned-perfect«laughter in John Woo's Late/(WI Despite having to stab John Travolta in the course of that film. she loved working with the strangely chinned actor.
‘lle’s really funny. really smart and really nice.‘ she gushes. ‘He would burst into song every 25 seconds and I would jttst be like. “Oh my (iod. that‘s Danny Zuko from Grease". Meeting him and Nicolas (‘age was like. "I'm supposed to be professional. but I'm peeing my pants".‘
Lolita goes on general release on Friday 15 May. Face/Off is available to rent on the Buena Vista label. See video reviews, page 107
Lie-28 1998THELIST5
41. ._.J": ‘3'”