12 Great Movies About Forbidden Romance
By Indiewire | IndiewireNovember 18, 2015 at 12:11PM
"Lolita" (1962)
Scandalous for its sordid subject material, "Lolita" is Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s masterpiece about a professor named Humbert Humbert who falls obsessively in love with his underage stepdaughter. Boasting a tagline that reads, "How did they ever make a movie of 'Lolita?,'" the film’s portrayal of love is just about as forbidden as it gets. Played by a 14-year-old Sue Lyon, Lolita is a gum-chewing, soda pop-drinking, ticking time bomb set to blow the decidedly conventional life of James Mason’s Humbert right up. For all of its controversy, the film actually shies away from depicting anything too provocative due to severe censorship at the time. Regardless, Kubrick’s film feels less a watered-down adaptation than a darkly comic and sharply suggestive film that makes us hyper-aware of everything we do not see.
**Barrie Karp