Sofia Coppola explains her love for Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Lolita’
In a cinematic landscape dominated by men, Sofia Coppola has been offering up refreshingly female perspectives and stories for the past few decades. After spending the 1990s working in between several creative endeavours, such as photography, modelling and fashion design, Coppola settled into filmmaking with her first short, Lick the Star.
The black-and-white short film is a tale of several middle school girls, yet Coppola casts a dark shadow over the narrative – her exploration of teenage hierarchies tinged by themes such as racism, bullying and one student’s plan to poison boys. With her debut feature, The Virgin Suicides, she similarly explored the lives of teenage girls with darkness and depth. Based on Jeffrey Eugendies book of the same name, Coppola used hazy imagery, accompanied by an original score by dream pop band Air, to depict the tragedy of five sisters whose freedom becomes increasingly limited.
Since then, she’s picked up an Oscar for writing Lost in Translation, which she also directed. Coppola has made other coveted films in the years since, from Marie Antoinette to The Bling Ring and, most recently, Priscilla. Always treating her female characters, often young girls, with respect, dignity and understanding, Coppola has garnered a large fanbase of teenagers and young women who identify with her characters.
Coppola once explained to Vogue how, “Growing up, I never felt like movies made for teenagers were very artfully made. They were usually cheap and cast people in their 30s as teenagers.” She also revealed that “art film[s] for teenagers” are important, with movies such as her father’s Rumble Fish acting as a huge source of inspiration.
In an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, she highlighted Rumble Fish as one of her favourite movies, placing it alongside titles like Sixteen Candles, The Last Picture Show and Lolita. The latter appears to be her favourite movie by Stanley Kubrick, one of the most renowned filmmakers in cinema history. While most people tend to select titles like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr Strangelove or The Shining as their favourite Kubrick movie, Coppola’s pick feels perfectly fitting.
The movie, adapted from Vladimir Nabokov’s book of the same name, depicts a middle-aged man’s obsession with a pre-teen girl, Dolores, whom he affectionately names Lolita. A dark tale about the way young girls are so often fetishised and abused, the movie interrogates the protagonist’s unstable mind with a hefty dose of dark humour. It feels unsurprising that Coppola, a filmmaker preoccupied with tales about young girls and the hardships they often come to face, would be attracted to the story of Lolita. In fact, it’s the kind of story you could imagine her adapting herself.
Kubrick’s movie was highly controversial upon its release, with a tagline reading, “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?” Many viewers didn’t think Kubrick should have made the movie, while others praised its wittiness. “I love Kubrick. I love the way he put that film together, the way it’s filmed. Just some of the shots he did there, like the reverse shot in the car window with the monster,” Coppola explained.
Lolita is a tricky work. It certainly is enjoyable and incredibly well made, but in comparison to the book, it hardly goes deep enough in communicating the horrors of Humbert’s pedophilic fascination with the vulnerable Dolores.
Watch the trailer below.
