Lolita

Lolita is probably my favorite film that we have watched so far. Having never seen it before, I was pretty taken aback by the leap Kubrick makes in this film toward an even more constructed, veiled, and grotesque sort of humor. As we watched, it felt as though so much of the dialogue could be boiled down to allusions to sex and desire. Additionally, the visual composition and blocking seemed to insert sexuality and innuendo at every corner. Kubrick manages to generate a sexual tension between Humbert and Lolita that oozes off the screen without ever showing the pair have sex with each other. 

                                                        Lolita being pouty and flirtatious, a common thread in the film.

Kubrick's tongue-in-cheek manner of humor really appealed to me. When Charlotte is killed, Humbert's attitude is not one of grief, but relief. The music that comes on when he sits in the bathtub immediately following the crash could not be more inappropriate for the scenario. But, of course, this deliberate choice has the effect of trivializing the death in a funny way. Once again we also see the emasculated male figure used as a means for the comedy. Humbert carries a sort of Victorian masculinity, one that doesn't translate very easily into the American atmosphere he exists in. He is proper and gentlemanly, and consequently is taken advantage of by Lolita. The adolescent plays with his infatuations, emasculating and infantilizing him throughout Lolita.